Although group members come from diverse industries, "the issues we all face are very much the same," says Becky Blalock, a Computerworld Premier 100 IT Leader who was a co-founder of the group and is CIO at Southern Co., a US$12 billion Southeastern energy company. "The last time we met, at Coke, we talked about disaster recovery because just about all of us had been impacted by Hurricane Katrina," she says. "I showed some of the things that had worked very well for us."

Blalock told the group that immediately after the hurricane, the only way Southern could communicate was via its own SouthernLinc wireless network. One member of the group subsequently bought 100 SouthernLinc mobile telephones, she says.

According to Blalock, the group grew from an idea put to her two and a half years ago by Gregory Morrison, CIO at Cox Enterprises Inc. "He said, 'It would be nice if we could talk without any vendors present.' We had about five CIOs at the first lunch, and we had such a great time, we said, 'We need to continue doing this,'" Blalock says.

"I always come away from those meetings so inspired and motivated," she adds. "It's very powerful; when you go back and talk to your executives and try to convince them to do something, you can say, 'At every other company in this town, they are already doing this.'"

And the professional as well as personal relationships established at the lunch meetings carry into other realms, Morrison says. "We are a close-knit group and interact often," he says. "Several of us are affiliated with other IT groups and nonprofit organizations that extend our relationships even further."