At a typical meeting, members of the ad hoc group -- CIOs at 15 of Georgia's largest companies -- recount their experiences with IT products, share horror stories about information security, offer tips on recruiting and hiring, compare strategies for regulatory compliance and reveal their secrets for vendor management.

They also plan their next project on behalf of a local charity. Last year, the CIOs contributed several hundred IT workers to build a house with Habitat for Humanity International Inc., teamed up to form a pro bono technology steering committee for the new Georgia Aquarium and helped put on a charity fund-raising gala called the Digital Ball.

"We call it 'group therapy,'" says Marian Lucia, a member of the lunch bunch and CIO at Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta. "It's not orchestrated. It's not sponsored by a vendor. It's ours."

The bimonthly meetings have no preset agenda; attendees just offer what's on their minds. "We've covered everything from Sarbanes-Oxley to what people did during Hurricane Katrina, our challenges around searching for talent, outsourcing, H-1B visas, organizational structures, how we manage compliance functions and our relationships with our CFOs," Lucia says. "I always come away with something."

For example, Lucia says, she took comfort and direction from noting that many of her peers had to hire more people in order to meet Sarbanes-Oxley Act requirements. "Before, I was feeling the pressure to have a compliance function within IT, but this gave me the validation," she says.