In actuality, all I did was travel to Palm Desert, Calif., to attend Computerworld's Premier 100 IT Leaders Conference, an event that has become the IT user community's essential annual gathering place. It's an amazing occasion, and the attendees no doubt come away each year with a memory of a defining moment -- one that captures the essence of the event.

For me, that moment came shortly after the final curtain fell. I happened to run into Tony Caesar, CIO at Head USA, the racquet sports gear maker. Caesar spoke about the previous 36 hours with an eloquence and a passion that I'm unlikely to ever forget.

What animated him most was his reference to a panel discussion that Computerworld 's Julia King, the conference chairwoman, had moderated. No, these panelists weren't disaster recovery "experts" or consultants who blithely expounded on what to do and how to do it. They were CIOs who had survived the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

They were people like Jan Rideout, CIO at Northrop Grumman Ship Systems , whose home was one of the countless that were lost amid the destruction. And Greg Meffert, CTO and CIO for the City of New Orleans, whose family fled to Texas while he stayed with Mayor Ray Nagin at the makeshift command post in the severely damaged downtown Hyatt. And Rizwan Ahmed, who just days before the conference was called upon to leave his post as CIO of Louisiana's Office of Group Benefits and the Department of Natural Resources to assume mind-boggling post-Katrina burdens as the state's CIO.

"They were here," Caesar said incredulously. "They were here."