Global CIO Forum completes 45 websummit events in 45 days, launches BOTS Live

Global CIO Forum successfully completed its half day web-summit on the theme of Workforce Transformation, CIO Rethink and Reprioritise. The half day event was staged on 20 May on the GCF UniteWebSummit platform and saw more than 500 attendees participating including CIOs, IT decision makers, IT Managers, and business heads from multiple regions including GCC, Middle East, Africa, India, South East Asia and the US.

20 May 2020 was particularly significant for the Global CIO Forum for two reasons. For one, it marked the culmination of a rapid series of websummit events, where 45 events were completed in 45 days using the GCF UniteWebSummit 2020 platform. Secondly, on 20 May, Global CIO Forum and global research partner RosettaNet Singapore, kicked off their global research campaign, that is expected to culminate in the months of August and September, ahead in this year.

GCF UniteWebSummit’s rapid go to market roll out has been supported by various sponsor partners including Appian, Exclusive Networks, Microsoft, Nutanix, Lenovo, Shure, Mindware, Dell Technologies, Citrix, Westcon, Automation Anywhere, Veritas, Finesse, Square One, TSME, ARCON, Juniper Networks, Datacentrix, and Share Technologies.

Speaking at the 20 May websummit on Workforce Transformation, Ronak Samantaray, CEO of GEC Media Group, pointed out that the role of media has evolved over the years. At a time when businesses across the world are being thrown into uncertain circumstances due to the pandemic, the norms of regular business and the normal for business are changing.

GCF UniteWebSummit was conceived with an aim to address this bottleneck and to help businesses to continue to work seamlessly. Vendors and solution providers now have a suitable platform to bring their solutions and best practices to the table. And with GCF UniteWebSummit end customers now have multiple points of contact to engage with them virtually. According to Samantaray, this has not only facilitated improved decision making for the participants, but has also improved the speed and timing of go-to-market activities from vendors and solution providers.

GCF UniteWebSummit has completed 45 websummits in 45 days, covering 30+ countries, reaching 6,500+ C-level executives, and leveraging the thought leadership of 35+ top global and regional speakers. The online attendees have participated in these events from GCC and Middle East, Africa, India, South East Asia, and the US. During these events 59% of the attendees have been CIOs from retail, healthcare, transport, logistics, government, and education market segments.

During these websummits, GCF UniteWebSummit completed 115+ online polls with live engagement with the attendees as well as sharing of the results. The consolidated websummits had 65+% attendee turnover and 89% attendee rating responses. The consolidated websummits resulted in 30+ end customer virtual meeting engagements, generating huge return on investment for the participating sponsors.

Samantaray also added that the Global CIO Forum had achieved another notable milestone in its track record. On 10 May, BOTS, the global CIO and IT decision makers online platform, for social networking and thought leadership collaboration, went live. This is intended to be a home for over 15,000 CIOs and IT heads from 30+ countries and 70 chapters.

Launched to be a one-of-its kind platform, the BOTS online platform currently supports 10+ languages, making business communication and knowledge transfer seamless and effortless. The BOTS online platform also possesses tools to co-create and collaborate with groups, podcasts and videos, to write and post your own blog, and much more. The BOTS online platform will also soon be a diversified portal for job listings, relevant to the individual fields and locale of work of its members, and will also include selected classifieds and listings.

The half day websummit on the theme of Workforce Transformation, CIO Rethink and Reprioritise on 20 May included 11 expert sessions on various pandemic related topics. The speakers at this websummit included Dr Khalid Saeed, Regional Advisor, Mental Health Substance Abuse unit, WHO; Ajay Rathi, Director of IT, Dubai Healthcare City Authority; Mohammed Abulhouf, Regional Sales Director, Saudi Arabia, Nutanix Middle East; Manoj Saxena, Chairman, RosettaNet Singapore; Anil Bhandari, Chief Mentor, ARCON; Krishnan Gopi, Chief Disruption Officer, GEMS Education; Venkatesh Mahadevan, CIO, Dubai Investments; Dr Erdal Ozkaya, Regional Head of Information Security, Standard Chartered Bank; Sumeet Pathak, Digital Workforce Evangelist, Automation Anywhere; Partha Banerjee, Group IT Manager, Safeer Group; and Dr Jassim Haji, President Artificial Intelligence Society Bahrain.

The websummit also included a panel discussion with five top executives across multiple regions. The theme of the panel discussion was about, life during and after the pandemic. The participating executives included Praful Thummar, Vice President of IT Jazeera Airways; Ashith P, CIO Regulus Capital; Anil Menon, General Manager of IT Innovation, Tata Starbucks; Randall Choh, Group IT Director, Park Hotel Group; and Vineet Kakkar, Unit Head of Governance, Sharjah e-Government.

The five executives were invited to share their experiences across the impact of the pandemic in their market segments; the types of business partnerships that have been put in place to maintain the momentum of business during the pandemic; and examples of how agile applications and technologies have been rebuilt to reposition business in the market place. As a disclaimer, the participants of the panel shared their comments reflecting their personal opinion and not necessarily the position of their organisation.

While Global CIO Forum and GCF UniteWebSummit have completed 45 events in 45 days, Samantaray points out that the rapid go to market activities will continue and many such exciting events are expected in the months ahead.