Free Steak Knives with Membership???

The Australian IT industry is experiencing an injection of membership organisations at the moment with CompTIA (as reported in ZDNet) and a new CIO Council (as reported in ComputerWorld) both setting up shop down under. Both appear to be positioned to compliment the Australian Computer Society, however how that plays out remains to be seen.

However, I had wondered why Computerworld was making such a fuss ("Free set of steak knives...and there's more!") about the new CIO Council. You would have thought that a bunch of CIO's getting together behind closed doors would reduce the value of their publications and research. But then I found at the bottom of the press release on the global CIO Council Website that:

"Launched in April 2004, the CIO Executive Council (www.cioexecutivecouncil.com) is a global, professional organization of CIOs created for the purpose of achieving lasting change within critical industry, academic, media and governmental groups. The council was founded by CXO Media Inc... CXO Media is a subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG)" and of course ComputerWorld is a publication of IDG...

Hmm. Do you think people will get free steak knives from the the world’s leading technology media, research and event company if they join the council? ;-)

Tags: Cio Council, CompTIA, Computerworld, Free Steak Knives