Digital initiatives from MIT CIO Symposium: Be bold

Are you ready for the next digital revolution? Ready or not, a new set of digital priorities are on the horizon for enterprise organizations as the global trend toward digitization accelerates.

At the 11^th annual MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Wednesday, IT industry thought leaders gathered in MIT's copper-plated Kresge Auditorium to discuss how to effectively navigate turbulent digital waters. SearchCIO attended the conference in full force to interview speakers and hop from session-to-session to ensure no ground-breaking example of digital-done-right was missed.

One of the last sessions, "CIO, CMO, CDO Perspectives on Digital Transformation," created quite the buzz outside the press room dungeon and on the Twitter-sphere. The panel discussion was headed by Thaddeus Arroyo, CIO at AT&T Services; George Westerman, research scientist at MIT Center for Digital Business; Robert Tas, chief marketing officer and SVP at Pegasystems; and Tanya Cordrey, chief digital officer at Guardian News & Media. The quartet gathered to discuss who is best positioned to handle digital transformation occurring in IT departments across industries: CIO, CMO or CDO.

The conversation was less of battle over who should be responsible for digital and more of potpourri of best-practice advice from the CIO, CMO and CDO -- much to the delight of the audience. Some of the most-tweeted advice came from Guardian CDO, Tanya Cordrey, who -- might we add -- has developed a number of award-winning digital products, grown a global audience to 84 million unique browsers per month and successfully executed a major global domain change at the Guardian:

Enjoyed hearing @tcordrey from @guardian at #MITCIO panel yesterday about working for a courageous org and urging us to "be bold."

— Jill Finger Gibson (@JillFGibson) May 22, 2014

For Guardian #CDO (news is ever-changing product!), top-line #digital metric is customer engagement. Sub-metric: speed. #MITCIO

— Fran Sales (@Fran_S_TT) May 21, 2014

Tanya Cordrey, CDO, the guardian: media shifting ar. engagement. Not uniques but return visitors is metric that matters #mitcio

— Laurianne McLaughlin (@lmclaughlin) May 21, 2014

If you couldn't attend Wednesday's MIT Sloan CIO Symposium, Senior News Writer Nicole Laskowski has you covered with five tips plucked straight from panel sessions.

• What's this about the end of 'social'? According to an article posted by Oliver Marks on ZDNet, we are currently leaving the era of standalone social networks and making moves toward a far more interconnected world. Think digitally or bust.
• Another Searchlight, another breach. eBay asked  users to change passwords Wednesday in light of a cyberattack that compromised a database containing encrypted passwords and other information. The bonus (sort of): It was all non-financial data.  
• Are drones the next must-have home accent? Martha Stewart -- the reigning queen of all things home and garden -- revealed to Vanity Fair that she uses a drone to take aerial photographs of her elegant, 153-acre Westchester County estate. Other ways Martha could use this drone: To critique your outdoor patio furniture, steal your brilliant landscaping concept or criticize your child's 3^rd birthday décor. Keep your eyes on the skies, everyone.
• The same guy who brought us DIY X-Men Wolverine claws uploaded a video to his YouTube channel Thursday to debut his Magneto magnetic shoes -- also inspired by the X-Men saga. "Magnetic shoes, something it seems only NASA has done before me," says garage inventor Colin Furze. "Not even Sir Ian McKellen uses real ones in the X-Men films." Furze may not be displaying superhero magnetic powers here, but the shoes impressively hold his weight while upside down. Watch for yourself.
• Here is you're weekly fluffy: A 15-month-old calf known as Hero was just fitted with high-tech prosthetics. Hero was rescued from an Augusta Country farm in Virginia by Kitty Martin last year after succumbing to frostbite that claimed two hooves. Animal surgeons at Texas A&M University treated Hero for several months and affixed initial prosthetics. The feel-good story doesn't end there. After outgrowing those, Hero was in need of a shiny upgrade -- painted with cow spots, of course.

Let us know what you think about the story; email Emily McLaughlin, associate site editor.