Rushing to Judgement

I am taking a few minutes time to write about my experiences so far at Gartner.  I may just be avoiding the studying I ought to be doing for what is likely to be a brutal accounting test tomorrow!

My first day at Gartner was on January 19th, and I started running with a visit to the Irving, TX sales office where I met all of the area account executives.  They were gathered for an annual planning meeting, so it was good timing for me.  Part of my job involves accompanying the AE's on select sales calls to sort of "show off the product", so it was good to get to know them a little bit.

I'm covering Web & Cloud Application Development at Gartner, and I am pleased to say that my first piece of research has been published.  Its a key issues note, which essentially is used to frame the important research for the rest of the year in my subject area. Here's a link in case you have a Gartner for IT Leaders subscription. Needless to say, there is a lot to write about as Web & Cloud AD are at the epicenter of what's important with software development today.  The convergence of cloud platforms with web development is going to be exciting to watch!

I've been extremely impressed with the quality of intellect here at Gartner.  Everyone on my team has been around for a long time - eight to ten years at least, with strong technology experience before coming on board.  They've also been pleasant to work with, and are willing to cut me a lot of slack for being a newbie.  The peer review process is pretty rigorous, and you have to be ready to defend your opinion, or revise it if you encounter contrary information that can't be dismissed.  For those of you that know me well, you know I like to discuss (some people would say argue or debate) so this has been a lot of fun.

On the MBA front, I am about to wrap up the first module of my second semester.  I continue to be impressed with the quality of faculty and the peers I have at SMU.  I'm worried that my time/tuition investment may take a while to pan out, since the economy is probably not going to recover for some time, but I know that the friendships and skills I am building will last a lifetime.

Speaking of the economy, I attended an economic forum talk yesterday at the SMU campus at Legacy.  Dr. Niemi, dean of the Cox school, spoke about his outlook for the next several years.  To say it was bleak is putting it mildly.  I took copious notes so I will write up a post on that after my financial accounting final tomorrow night.  For now, back to the books..