Is IT making us more global or more local?

Wednesday 4th July 2012, 6:30 pm.

Speaker: Rashik Parmar - President, IBM Academy of Technology.

Venue: Room 4.31, University of Edinburgh Informatics Forum, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AB.

Refreshments and networking from 6:00 pm.

This event is free of charge and open to all. No registration required - just turn up.

Synopsis

How do organisations define what should be local and what should be global/country defined? It's an interesting challenge we face in many different areas and technology is at the core of this. How does a future IT leader in Edinburgh, for example, compete with a global leader in China or South America?

People, organisations, governments all need to focus and understand what they are going to offer and just as importantly understand, why? In this talk Rashik will posit that there is too much globalisation and localisation - what's happened to the middle? Organisations need to connect what they chose to focus on to the individual and the biggest issue is how they apply I.T. to create the greatest value.

About the speaker

Rashik is President of IBM's Academy of Technology and also an IBM Distinguished Engineer. During his 28 years at IBM, Rashik has worked for financial, retail and manufacturing clients on IT projects of all sizes. Overall, he specialises in ensuring the technical success of complex IT projects. He is currently leading projects related to IBM's Smarter Cities programme and the development of techniques to drive industry level innovation. Rashik is also IBM’s Partnership Executive for Imperial College London; an Adjunct Professor for the Department of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Imperial College Business School; Visiting Professor to the Intelligent Systems and Networks Group at the Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering; and a Fellow of the BCS.