My ten-question interview with longtime technologist and top Fortune 100 executive, Julius Tomei, is out in today's TechRepublic. His job covers 50,000 end users in 45 countries, and his experience runs the gamut of technology-related positions. Among other topics like outsourcing, mobility and consolidation, Julius talks about his perception that IT should no longer be thought of as a department.
I also asked Julius for his insights on delivering remarkable presentations, both the ones he gives and the ones he has attended:
I also asked Julius for his insights on delivering remarkable presentations, both the ones he gives and the ones he has attended:
"Two things stand out to me when it comes to Powerpoint: getting the right number of slides, and using good graphics and illustrations. What I see most often is either more slides than necessary or not enough. Then there are people who are good at developing very elaborate slides that actually end up losing the audience's attention. Using relevant pictures and graphics is the way to keep people focused. I try to put together slides I can talk to and not read from, and discuss the background behind the slides.
In 2007 I was invited to speak at the annual itSMF conference in Atlanta on the topic of how I got ITIL to work. I took them through the process by illustrating in terms of golf. You don't win by hitting holes in one every time. You do it by making a series of putts. So I was able to keep the discussion at a high level for a larger audience. I can get technical when I need to, but in this case I needed to make it very accessible. When I do include technical information in a presentation, I like to keep it to one or two slides. What people really want to know is, 'How did you come to think of that? What was your thought process?' In this case it was to run a lights-out data center very efficiently and at the lowest practical cost. I needed people to speak the same language and operate from the same framework, and that was ITIL. Explaining in those terms really resonated with the audience."
In 2007 I was invited to speak at the annual itSMF conference in Atlanta on the topic of how I got ITIL to work. I took them through the process by illustrating in terms of golf. You don't win by hitting holes in one every time. You do it by making a series of putts. So I was able to keep the discussion at a high level for a larger audience. I can get technical when I need to, but in this case I needed to make it very accessible. When I do include technical information in a presentation, I like to keep it to one or two slides. What people really want to know is, 'How did you come to think of that? What was your thought process?' In this case it was to run a lights-out data center very efficiently and at the lowest practical cost. I needed people to speak the same language and operate from the same framework, and that was ITIL. Explaining in those terms really resonated with the audience."
