Well, itSMF Fusion 2009 is over.  The only one I'd been to previously was itSMFusion 2007 in Charlotte, NC.  (If you're interested, see blog entries from 2007 and from 2009.)  I went to the academic forum for the first time, as well as the conference proper.

First off, Gaylord Hotels are BIG!!  Check out this movie from ServiceSphere:

Well, itSMFusion 2009 is over!  Here are my write-ups.  See also my write-ups from day one.

Day two

• (Kirk Weisler gave a keynote about being "positively contagious," which I didn't write up)
• itSMF Fusion 2009: IT Strategy--the Key to Getting Executive Support
• (I went to part of a good presentation about OLAs but had to step out)
• itSMF Fusion 2009: Release & Deployment Management: What the Books Didn't Tell You
• itSMF Fusion 2009: CSI--Just Click Your Heels and Sprinkle Pixy Dust... Right?

Day three

• itSMF Fusion 2009: Planning Business Manager and Customer ITIL Induction
• itSMF Fusion 2009: Roadmapping Service Management Success

Wil LeBlanc, currently from Safeway but previously with the Army, gave this presentation.  This presentation was very similar in concept to the itSMF Fusion 2009: IT Strategy--the Key to Getting Executive Support and itSMF Fusion 2009: Planning Business Manager and Customer ITIL Induction presentations.  Wil related his experience at the Army and at Safeway in implementing service management.

Malcom Fry gave this talk.  He is really funny and an engaging speaker.  His talk overlapped with the previous day's "IT Strategy--the Key to Getting Executive Support."  Here are some random notes from his talk:

Tom Pierce from AT&T gave this talk.  Essentially Tom made the following points:

• CSI doesn't get the attention it needs
• Someone in your organization should have explicit CSI duty
• ITIL calls out the role "CSI Manager" specifically for this purpose

Tom said that improvement has to follow the "farm" model: plant, cultivate, nurture, then harvest.  You can't plant and then harvest.

Dave Howard from Toyota Financial Services gave this talk on release management.
At the moment, I can't find my notes.  The main thing I remember is that they have created a release process for any new environment.  For each environment needed for a project (e.g. dev, test, and prod), you have to go through a process of architecture design creation and review, specification creation and review, and finally the actual build.

Dalibor Petrovic from Deloitte gave this very dense talk on IT strategy.  He had a lot of good content--he just needs a half-day workshop to cover it in a way that allows the listener to absorb all the good points he's making.  He has the most certificates of anyone I've ever met, and he wrote about IT Service Management for his MBA thesis.
He said that IT fails for these ten reasons:

Here are links to blog entries for the sessions I attended today (Monday) at itSMF Fusion 2009:

• itSMF Fusion 2009: Ask the Expert--Continual Service Improvement
• itSMF Fusion 2009: Keynote by Dr. Jackie Freiberg
• itSMF Fusion 2009: ITSM+PMO=NWO
• itSMF Fusion 2009: Accelerated ISO/IEC 20000 Adoption Case Study
• itSMF Fusion 2009: Rethinking Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) During an Economic Downturn
• itSMF Fusion 2009: Vroom! Running IT Like a Business

David Coyle from Gartner spoke, and then led a panel discussion, about "Running IT Like a Business."
IT is no longer a monopoly.  Business people are pretty smart at IT nowadays.  IT must compete and maintain its position as a trusted advisor.  The business can make their own decisions, such as purchasing an account with salesforce.com.

Link Alander and Shah Ardalan from the Lone Star College System (LSCS) gave this presentation.  LSCS has over 65,000 students and is growing at 5-8% a year.
They initially had difficulty in instituting metrics; IT in particular had been dodging measurement since Y2K--saying they were too busy, or that IT was changing too quickly.  They have four particular areas of focus: