Anniversary Gala

What a spectacular evening! With over 500 friends of ACT-IAC in attendance at a beautiful venue, how could it not be. Kelly Olson told me she has been losing sleep, worried about making the event special. Well, she, Megan Price and the entire volunteer planning team (Donna Morea, Kin Nelson, Betsy Steele and many others) did succeed in making it special. I thought I knew all the details of the event, but they surprised me with the framed pictures - a lovely touch. As Adrian Gardner said at the end of the evening, it was "beyond excellent!".

In my quest to personally welcome and thank everyone there (I did not succeed but did connect with a lot of you), I heard many tidbits, a few of which I will share. John Ortego seemed elated to reconnect; Crouse Powell said it felt like old home week seeing people he hadn't seen in a decade; and Harold Klink said he thought it would be just another event until he got there and found he met many new people. I enjoyed hearing Ken Allen's tale of when it all started and the then and now tales from Izzy, Howard and Martha. Throughout the evening, I talked about social media with Linda and Doug Cureton; new things happening in broadcasting with Ted Hengst and Bob Dinkel; the FCW supplement with Anne Armstrong; twittering with Tom Suder; current events with Jason Miller; whether the government cared about being efficient with Mark Drapeau; wine tasting with Chris Armstrong (it's a long story); partners/voyagers with Rory Schultz; changing careers with Ray Sullivan; and Arlington with Mike Carleton and Bill Piatt. Every conversation had a different flavor. But after 5 1/2 hours; I left the last diehards at 10:30p with feet that had had enough. This morning, I find that I have 2 new followers of iacinsider, my IAC twitter account, and John got his golf club back from Dennis Callahan (another long story).

A couple of people commented on my comments, one noting the connection to what I said at ELC. Wow, that's listening! I gave those brief remarks last night a lot of thought. It was a 2 minute attempt to sum up all IAC-ACT does, how far we have come since those early days and what the future may bring - a tall order. You can assess whether I hit the mark. I am including the script of my comments below.

It was a great evening, made so by all of you who attended, and by all of you who do so much for this great organization.

Leslie
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Building on that great beginning, 20 years later we are successfully driving dialogue across the spectrum of IT issues. Industry is collaborating with government in our programs, industry leading conferences, shared interest group activities, and the professional development of our current and future leaders. We even worked together in writing transition advisory papers; papers which the new administration wanted to read, to hear about, to discuss. We are invited to the table. We have indeed come a long way.

An even more remarkable sign of the evolution, we now have in place an administration that embraces technology, demands collaboration and is reaching out to ACT-IAC for thought leadership. We, industry and government together, will respond by continuing to plan and execute activities that enable our community to explore issues and options.

As I look forward, I see promise and risk. Some within the government side of our community want to participate, but face undue limitations imposed by those who do not understand our transparency or the high value our collaboration provides to the government and the citizenry.

Maintaining open communication and collaboration will be the key to ACT-IAC's continued relevancy. As a community we must fight against those who seek to limit collaboration. We must maintain our focus on interactive dialogue, not as a theme but as the defining tenet of our unique public-private partnership. So I call upon you to embed driving dialogue in ACT-IAC. Answers to critical IT issues will emerge when we collaborate, when we work in partnership to learn and progress.

So please join me in thanking our founders and toasting our 20 years of ACT-IAC collaborative success, and 20 more going forward. Thank you for joining in this celebration of our partnership.