It's a subject that will appeal to our more sentimental readers and is the focus of our special report on page 1 (Computerworld Australia print edition April 5).
Interestingly, readers surveyed for the special report nominated the year 2006 as the best of times, claiming IT and business alignment has elevated technology to a status more befitting those working in IT today. I like the attitude of why be an extra when you can play the leading role?
And judging by the latest salary surveys, the year could turn to gold, especially for those with titles in high demand such as enterprise architects or project managers.
ICT is certainly an industry that's never short of activity - from roundtables to award nights, even the occasional breakfast seminar. I've done them all in the past week. The ICT event calendar is relentless.
It was good to finally present Frost & Sullivan's inaugural ICT awards after enduring the judging process last month which wasn't easy.
If you have ever had one of those all-day meetings where nobody could reach agreement, then you have some idea of what judging is like.
It certainly makes for a long day, or if the subject matter is interesting, it makes for a highly passionate debate.
Drama and a commitment to the job at hand was certainly the order of the day at the judging.
As a first-time judge, I managed to show some restraint for the first hour or two (okay, the first 15 minutes) but by day's end the formalities were long gone.
We began the day with a plan to select winners in a long list of categories.
But agreement couldn't be reached in every category so a few were abandoned. In other categories we hit a stalemate.
And at other times judges locked in their votes and didn't want to budge. While this only made it an even longer day for everyone, it's evidence of how committed all of the judges were to ensuring every winner was a well-deserved recipient of a Frost & Sullivan Award.
No recipient was selected just for the sake of choosing a winner in each category. If it couldn't be done, it didn't happen.
All the more reason to send hearty congratulations to every award winner ... full coverage of the event is on page 8 (Computerworld print edition April 5).
Earlier in the week, I participated in the Computerworld breakfast briefing entitled, Strategic technologies for 2006 & Beyond.
More than 500 readers attended the event which featured Gartner research Fellow Martin Reynolds.
He provided great insight into the computing landscape over the next decade. Looking back or looking ahead, the real gold is in the journey.
Where's the yellow brick road taking you? Email sandra_rossi@idg.com.au