Efm Events

Guy Cherp
VP
Cox Business

Roger Moeller
VP, Enterprise Architect
Physicians Mutual

David Robinson
CIO
Lockton Companies

The classic line from the Matrix as Morpheus must teach Neo that the world he sees is not real. So what about your world? Do the challenges and barriers you perceive really exist - or can you learn to move freely around them. This discussion will challenge that what you see and believe and open your thoughts to new realities. What you decide and how you act from this new perspective will shape your future the way you want it to be.

Martie Cordaro
Vice President and General Manager
Omaha Storm Chasers

Laurie Schlender
Controller
Omaha Storm Chasers

The Omaha Storm Chasers have experienced many growing pains in the past year. Some of them relate to moving to their new ballpark, Werner Park. Some relate to a new and growing staff. Some relate to change in the business environment and economy. Because having the right technology can make an impact in so many areas of their business, it was very important to find the right IT solution at Werner Park. One year ago, they were in an environment where business decisions had to be altered because technology couldn’t support management’s ideas and goals. Now, just one short year later, they can make business decisions with confidence that technology either already supports or can grow to support the ideas they want to implement to make their business stronger. Martie Cordaro, VP and General Manager, and Laurie Schlender, Controller, will talk about the challenges faced and the solutions that have been implemented to address those challenges.

David Courter
Sr. Systems Programmer
Mutual of Omaha

The goal of Service Level Management is effective communication that provides transparency and business alignment of the IT services provided. This is enabled by documented definition of and agreement on IT services and service levels. Mutual of Omaha began a path in 2010 to implement Service Level Management as defined by CobiT DS1 and ITIL. This presentation will discuss the approach used by Mutual of Omaha to implement a Service Catalog, Service Level Agreements, Operational Level Agreements, and Service Level Reporting. Mutual of Omaha’s continuous improvement plan will also be discussed for keeping the catalog current and increasing the maturity level of Service Management.

Gary Acromite
CIO
The Gavilon Group, LLC

With the on-slot of emerging technologies, the evolution of tech-savvy functional teams, a plethora of externalized service delivery alternatives, and extraordinary business value expectations derived from every technical dollar invested, the future role and contributions of Information Technology professionals will be undergoing radical change over the foreseeable strategic horizon.

Virtually all businesses are technology businesses today. But not all technology resources will be applied consistently for all business models. Moreover, the tradition / current IT organizational model – and the implied career value for the IT professionals – will evolve in drastic ways.

Are you ready?

Cecil Jones
Director of IT Infrastructure and Operations
Valmont Industries

Everyday we face challenges in support of our business initiatives. How, when and why do we decide to let someone else manage our environment. For the past 20 years Valmont has had different situations where they have relied on third party people to help in their IT initiatives to get things done. During this session they will share their lessons learned about Managed Services.

Tom Haley
Associate VP, Health and Clinical IT
Creighton University

Creighton Medical Associates embarked on a project in December 2010 to implement the Allscripts Enterprise EHR. The implementation involves over 30 clinical locations and approximately 950 users that include physicians, clinic staff, residents, and medical students. Citrix XenApp server was chosen to provide access that is both flexible and secure. Additional benefits of simplified client application upgrades, ability to leverage existing client hardware, and session shadowing/recording enhance the learning process. VMware was also used to virtualized many of the servers that are part of the EHR System, to reduce the number of physical devices and enhance the disaster recovery process. Tom Haley, Associate VP for Health and Clinical IT, will share the benefits of their strategy in deploying, maintaining and supporting the Allscripts EHR for Creighton Medical Associates.

George Royce
Vice President
Mutual of Omaha

Increasingly capable mobile devices such as iPhone, iPads and Android devices are being used by employees in their personal lives and many companies are struggling with support for these technologies. There are also business uses of iPads that are compelling. The presentation will discuss an approach used by Mutual of Omaha to manage the use of personally owned devices within the enterprise and the experience and lessons learned.

There will also be time to poll the audience on best practices and lessons they have learned from the use of personally owned devices in the enterprise

Joe Shepley
Vice President and Practice Leader
Doculabs

Building a Social Enterprise is a daunting task. Besides choosing the correct solution set and deployment approach, what are the other risks? How will it affect regulatory compliance? Will your process for e-Discovery need to change? If you’re interested in the benefits but concerned about the risk, this session is for you.

You’ll walk away with essential information about:

• How to determine if social collaboration is appropriate for your organization
• How to navigate the turbulent waters between the social media and enterprise collaboration solution marketplaces
• Real-world use cases that demonstrate the benefits and caveats of introducing social collaboration functionality
• Understanding the risks that collaborative applications and social networking sites present
• Extending your existing records management and e-discovery systems and processes to manage social content and conversations

Kevin Dohrmann
VP & CTO
CoSentry

Data centers today are being dramatically affected by the demand for power, cooling, security and safety. The presenter has 25 years of experience in the IT industry as CTO for large systems integrators and service provider and this presentation will address methods and best practices to deal with these trends in our industry toward virtualization and cloud services.

Attendees will have valuable insight into how to navigate the way to successful data center decision based on the industry trends toward cloud services, virtual servers, network cost decreases and other factors facing managers and others in organizations that need to provide IT services to their constituents.

Would your CEO characterize your company as an information company?  Does your company see IT as a cost center or a strategic asset?  Do you have the same voice as leaders of other functional units?  Do you shape and enable business strategy, or do you react to it? As leaders of technology organizations, our key challenge can be to find relevance in the world of executive management, operations, and business strategy.  And as a leader, only you can define your relevance.  In this talk we will examine ideas and approaches that make IT executives effective—and keep them that way.

Tim Hiatt
Director of Network Administration
Brodstone Memorial Hospital

You have virtualized the data center the results have been tremendous. Now you want to take the same principles of server virtualization and apply them to your desktop environment. Windows 7 migrations are looming and IT organizations are looking for a better way to handle the process. Desktop virtualization from VMware is all the buzz, but few organizations have deployed a proof of concept or seen the technology live.

In this session, Tim will discuss the benefits his organization has seen from his desktop virtualization rollout, the hardware and software components required for a successful implementation and how IT organizations can build the business case to gain executive support. There will also be a live demo of desktop virtualization so attendees can see the technology first hand.

Greg Nichols
CTO
Proxibid

Every organization comes to a point in its maturity when the leadership must determine the next phase - is the organization satisfied with being a lifestyle business or will it take hold of every opportunity to become a world-class operation. Lifestyle businesses simply earn money and are satisfied with organic growth - where world-class companies are committed to the investment to achieve the growth and consistently reinvest in human capital and technology to maintain a competitive edge.

Proxibid is committed to becoming a world-class company, and is working towards global domination in the online auction marketplace. Making such a commitment does not come cheap, nor is it easy. This is a journey where the today's end-game cannot come fast enough for one of our state's fastest growing companies.

Greg Nichols, Chief Technology Officer will discuss his real-life experiences in taking the leap and the ongoing challenges of taking Proxibid from ordinary to world-class.

Bret Blackman
Director, Administrative Information Services
University of Nebraska at Omaha

Don Mihulka
Associate CIO
University of Nebraska System

Virtually all organizations face the challenge of providing intelligent information to large, demanding, and geographically disparate consumers. Typical barriers to realizing intelligent information to these consumers include dealing with complex data environments (ERP, CRM, data marts, excel, etc), need for easy to use consumer facing tools, financial constraints, and resource limitations. Learn how the University of Nebraska System supports seven campuses and multiple departments through an advanced Enterprise Business Intelligence solution.

John Mello
Network Engineer
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska

Allan Hull
Networking Engineers
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska

Common corporate conference rooms, used by directors and executives, incorporate higher-end video conferencing components from Tandberg and Polycom. These video components provide high-definition video (720 dpi), large screen monitors, and higher-quality audio capabilities. The conference room environment tends to be stationary in nature.

Today’s work force is a mobile one, and this is true for corporate executives. The executive wants to retain the conferencing benefits of the corporate conference room, but desires mobility. An individual laptop with webcam is not the ideal substitute for this audience. Today’s business needs require conferencing solutions that incorporate high definition video and higher quality audio.

Rich Richardson
CIO
Kiewit

We will review the current approach Kiewit is using for application user adoption. Many of you have purchased a SmartApp, Many of you have dealt with large implementations of software. What if we used the consumer smartapplication method business's like Apple and Google are using for application user adoption for large implementations? We believe this will smooth out the magnitude of change and allow business leadership to focus in on critical changes that allow the business to be more competitive and become a learning culture. During this time we will review Kiewit's current approach in more of a dialogue based manner of looking for barriers and adjustments to the model using our collective experience.

Terry Dooley
SVP & CIO
SHAZAM

Is your organization thinking about installing Wireless LAN technology? This session will highlight some the value, risks, and implementation considerations an organization should consider when implementing WLAN support. Wireless support isn’t just about securing the wireless network. You must consider how to segment the WLAN, the different users of the WLAN whether that is employees, vendors, auditors, or other people who visit your facility. Is WLAN a full replacement for wired technology and is it as secure as wired technology. What can you expect from an employee perspective and what type of requests may follow a WLAN implementation. How do you monitor and manage the WLAN and more importantly can you detect rogue access points or smart phones acting as hot spots.

Join these industry leaders in an interactive discussion and hear what issues are facing today's CIO's and learn how they are resolving them. This panel discussion provides a rare opportunity to hear first hand what’s on the mind of these local executives.

You will hear from leading chief information officers regarding a variety of topics but centered around two main themes: What are the strategies being deployed around mobile devices? (security, policy, innovative uses). Also we will touch on characteristics and skill sets that are found in successful CIO’s. Audience questions will also be taken as well.

Gary Acromite
CIO
The Gavilon Group, LLC

Steve Held
CIO
Leo. A. Daly

Scott Buchholz
SVP & CIO
Black Hills Energy

Ken Kroeger
CIO
Law Firm Kutak Rock

Chad Tuttle
Director Systems Infrastructure
Farm Credit Services of America