Posted by
Barry Siskind
UFI’s Community Manager

We all wrestle with the issue of technology. Some of us are hesitant because we worry about technology obsolescence, others lack the internal resources and some of us are simply overwhelmed. On April 8 – 10 UFI’s UFI ICT and Operations & Services Focus Meetings will be held in Poznan, Poland. There is a great line up of presenters as well as ample opportunity for participants to network.

One speaker in the ICT Focus Meeting is Stephan Forseilles, Head of Technology for Artexis, Easy Fairs group. Stephan will be presenting a session titled, An Example of an IT infrastructure, in his talk he will address some of the questions many of us have.

I asked Stephan a few questions to give you a preview of his presentation.

Barry:

What are the most important ingredients that every organizer should have as part of his or her IT department?

Stephan:

The two most important ingredients are reliability and flexibility. With the ever increasing dependency on online marketing tools and CRM environments, reliability is a no-brainer. However, the challenge is to retain reliability while increasing the speed at which we can adapt to new solutions and challenges like mobile and social media. What do we outsource and what do we in-source? What do we buy and what should we develop?

Barry:

What are the differences between an international IT department and one that is nationally based?

Stephan:

It is hard to deny the advantages of centralising the infrastructure: economies of scale, faster roll out, more robust architecture and ability to deploy solutions that would otherwise be impractical (Big Data, Cloud…) however, centralised IT departments are often seen as ivory towers, far away from the end-user’s day-to-day problems. The question is, where should the line be drawn? The answer resides, in a large part, within the personalised relationship between the centralised IT team and the local teams, and in impeccable service, of course.

Check out the entire program at www.ufi.org/poznan2014