GPS ITSM View Point: itSMF Singapore Conference

As I pack my bags heading back to India, I wanted to share my initial thoughts and experiences of the recently concluded itSMF Annual Conference on 21^st March 2014 at Park Royal Hotel, Beach Road.

The Theme of the Annual Conference was “ITSM Leadership Congress” that witnessed 125+ Delegates, 11 Speakers, 10 Sponsors, 6 countries, providing 5 PDUs, 4 Panelists, 3 Keynotes, 2 tracks during the 1 day jam packed schedule.

Just prior to the conference, AXELOS conducted its First ever Round table event at the same venue that attracted some of the leading ATOs and EIs attend full day event on 20^th March, sharing some key insights and feedback to AXELOS leadership team.

Aligning to the theme of “ITSM Leadership Congress” – Broader topics were selected to present with both national & International flavors on ITSM Leadership trends. Rama Prasad Mamidi, President itSMF Singapore welcomed all the delegates, speakers, sponsors and Council members gathering.

The President’s speech was followed by an energetic group of students from Republic Polytechnic do a group dance of rock & roll to pep up the whole conference using their electrifying performance.

The GOH, Leong See Sum – CIO of Defense Science and technology Agency (DSTA) mentioned that Singapore is the Asian hub for IT Service Management.

The Conference was divided in to two tracks based on choices and 3 key notes that had the entire audience attend at the big room

Some key aspects that would be of interest to know from this conference

a) First 20 registrants received a free 1 year itSMF Membership worth of SGD 200

b) MoU was signed between itSMF Singapore & EXIN to collaborate and provide value to itSMF Members.

c) This is one of the very few chapters in the world that provides global members of itSMF voting power and acceptance to represent Executive Council/Board.

d) AXELOS decided to host its first Round table event at Singapore and also chose to participate as the first Asian itSMF Conference.

e) The Conference focused on diversified topics like Green IT, Service Governance Consultancy, The Era of End User Experience, Transitioning Services into Production, ITSM story telling, CSI in action, Leadership transformation, Emotional Intelligence in action and Future Best Practices . Click Here

Running two tracks simultaneously has its fair share of pros & cons – However all presentations had pragmatic use cases, case studies in demonstrating ITSM leadership trends and best practices.

Four sessions that received maximum kudos from the feedback received from delegates were

“Service Governance” from Peter Brooks, ITSM – Story Telling by Rui Soares, Leadership Transformation -Be a professional problem solver by Matt Fourie & Green IT by Ian Toland

I was particularly impressed by two sessions that appealed to me easily in both our personal and Professional life. a) ITSM – Storing telling way b) Emotional Intelligence in action

Rui Soares faced the challenge of doing a session parallel to AXELOS Peter Hepworth, but attracted quite significant interest and kept the audience captivated. I was glad to be a recipient of his personal drawing gifted towards audience question.

Drawing the technical sessions to a closure, Dominic Siow made an emphatic & energetic presentation inspiring all the delegates providing key takeaways to master emotional intelligence in both professional and personal life.

The Panel discussion had 4 panelists, 2 of them were representatives from end user organizations like Changi Airport & Citibank, while 2 were from itSMF Singapore and itSMF Australia respectively. Panelists discussed about challenges, market trends and adoption of ITSM across different domains and industry sectors. The session was lively and little animated when the audience started debating on business value from IT Service Management.

There was plenty of traction during tea-breaks, lunch break & registration time among delegates, sponsors, speakers and council members. I had some great discussion from practitioners and representatives of end-user organization on the context of how ITSM is creating the right value proposition to yield true business outcomes.

The Master of Ceremony - Marco & Ayish did a fabulous job in articulating a story thread from the beginning till the end creating logical continuity of flow from one session to another.

Vinay Jain, VP of itSMF Singapore proposed the vote of thanks followed by the big raffle draw and number of lucky draw prizes.

Later in the evening, the Annual Members night had a good informal get together of all itSMF members, speakers and sponsors to network with 8 course round table dinner, followed by cultural performance.