252- Visionary CTO Howard Holton on the Power of Language and Empathy

Dissecting Popular IT Nerds

Technology

5 • 49 Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2024

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Howard Holton Howard Holton is a visionary technology executive with over 35 years of experience in IT. He currently serves as CTO of GigaOM, leading the analyst firm’s technology strategy and vision. Howard has held CIO, CTO and CISO roles at organizations such as Hitachi Vantara and Leidos. His passion lies in exploring new techniques and pushing the boundaries of how technology can transform business. Howard began coding at age 11 and never looked back. He is dedicated to continuous learning and believes in the power of language to drive change. Visionary CTO Howard Holton on the Power of Language and Empathy In this forward-thinking discussion, we gain unique perspective from veteran CTO Howard Holton as he shares insights spanning technology, business, and leadership. With decades guiding IT strategy and operations, Howard explores the importance of precise language, empathy, and continuous learning in driving digital transformation. Expect strategic insights on aligning technology and business goals, overcoming risk aversion, and maintaining customer focus. This visionary CTO provides thought-provoking ideas to help prepare organizations for the future.

Transcript

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0:00.0	All right, well, welcome to another episode of dissecting popular IT nerds.
0:12.2	Today, I'm proud to introduce Howard Holton.
0:16.1	Howard is the CTO of Giggoom, an industry analyst firm, and has been in the CIO, C-T-O-C-I-S-O seat for the last 17 years.
0:25.4	And I spent 35 years in IT overall.
0:28.6	And Howard, I hear you wrote your first piece of commercial software at 11?
0:33.4	I did.
0:34.3	I did.
0:34.7	My dad owned a law office, the only law office in the little town that I was in, and he was struggling with, it's called pleading papers. It was a special format at the time. And basically, a paralegal or an attorney would write a plead, which is something you're going to file with the court, then put it on a floppy disc and hand it to a legal secretary who would bring it up on
0:54.2	one screen while she typed on pleading, pre-printed pleading paper on an IBM Selectric
1:00.4	typewriter. So it was completely duplicative work. And so I developed a piece of software called
1:05.2	Plead Perfect that ran on top of Word Perfect that gave legal specific templates and watermarking so you didn't have to duplicate
1:12.1	the work. Nice. And you did this at 11. Just for the heck of it, right? I had built a little
1:20.3	piece of software for tracking my baseball card collection. My parents thought, like my parents were both
1:24.9	into sports and they thought if they got me baseball cards that I'd get into sports no I just got into statistics and so I built a little piece of software to keep track
1:33.1	of it and kind of track the values of my cards so I knew kind of what went up and what went down every
1:36.9	month and that got me started in computers and then when my dad said this I built this piece of
1:42.0	software and he started telling all his law office buddies who were then like, ooh, can we buy it? This seems amazing. So he closed the law office, started a computer company. We went around selling it to all his law office buddies. And then I built landtastic networks over Arknet to do simple file share, file and print sharing. And that never, never left IT.
2:02.9	When I was a sophomore in high school,
2:04.7	I was presenting to my school board and was the largest non-construction contractor
2:08.1	that my school district had.
2:10.1	And all of this while you're still a kid before.
2:13.0	So, wow.
	...

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