Machteld Meijer and Mark Smalley had the pleasure of meeting up with Charles Betz for a breakfast discussion on Saturday 21st January 2012.

Charlie is based in Minneapolis in the USA and a highly respected member of the IT community. He was on business in Europe and found time on his way from Antwerp to Amsterdam to exchange thoughts with a couple of members of the of the of ASL BiSL Foundation.

The wide-ranging discussion covered fundamental topics such as the difference between information (referring to Shannon) and information technology; the gray boundary between demand and supply of IT services and when to formalize and divide the demand-supply responsibilities; the MBA fallacy (managers don't need to understand the underlying business) and the general business management skills that many IT people lack; the lack of a common language between business and IT; IT services (distinguishing between types and instances); IT goods being replaced by services and IT professionals moving up the IT stack; cargo cult science and people regarding IT as magic; the role of the CIO and the often dysfunctional CFO-CIO relationship; the funding of IT (referring to Meyer).

Charlie: "I continue to be impressed with the Low Countries' thought leadership in IT management and governance."

Charles Betz is Research Director for IT Portfolio Management at Enterprise Management Associates, and author of the recently published second edition of Architecture and Patterns for IT: Service Management, Portfolio Management, and Governance (Making Shoes for the Cobbler's Children). You can follow Charlie on Twitter @CharlesTBetz and on his blog.