Wanted: Millennials and Gen-Zers in Enterprise ITWanted: Millennials and Gen-Zers in Enterprise IT

If you’re an IT/communications professional at the management or senior leadership level within your enterprise, you’ve likely been around long enough to have witnessed the profound changes this industry has undergone in the past decade or two: From hardware to software, from voice over IP as an emerging technology to video as not just table stakes for employees’ communications, but its lifeblood during a time of near-universal remote work. You can look back on the breathtaking pace of change over the last couple of years and viscerally feel how different the world — and your job — has become.

For those nearer to the beginning of your career, who aim to step into that next tier of leadership, the arc of that career will be bound up with the still-uncertain course that the nature of work itself will take in the wake of the pandemic. The technology you provide to your enterprise’s end users will drive not just their experience of work in the coming years but yours as well.

At Enterprise Connect (EC), we’ve decided to create a direct line into this emerging cohort of leaders, and so, we’re launching a Next-Gen Advisory board, composed of IT professionals who represent, as the name suggests, the generation that will grow in influence and stature within their organizations over the next decade and beyond. We’ll engage with this group on a regular basis to get their insights and feelings about their jobs, as well as talking about work itself — the challenges and opportunities they face as they build their careers in a work environment that may be very different from the one they were hired into.

I hope that this group will be able to help guide our team in understanding what types of programming and areas of focus would be most helpful to them as attendees of EC and as part of our community. I also hope that we can help connect them to their peers and those who can help them build their understanding of the industry as they advance and increase their influence within their organizations.

We hope to begin our work with this new board later this summer or early fall, as the EC team moves full-bore into the planning for Enterprise Connect 2023, which takes place March 27–30, 2023, at the Gaylord Palms hotel in Orlando.

We have several members lined up for the new advisory board, but we’re seeking a few more to round out the group. There’s not a hard-and-fast age limit, but we’re generally looking for folks in the 35– 40 or younger range. The main requirement is that the board will consist of those working within the enterprise, as opposed to industry vendors. In appreciation for their help, members will receive complimentary entire event admission to Enterprise Connect.

So, if you know a promising Millennial or Gen Z employee at an enterprise — or if you are such a person yourself — I’d be grateful if you’d get in touch with me. Just email [email protected], and we’ll get the conversation going. I’m looking forward to this exciting new initiative.

On a similar note, I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a shout-out to the members of our existing Advisory Board, who we’ll continue to work with, in addition to the Next-Gen group. They’ve been an incredible source of wisdom, guidance, and encouragement to my team and me over the past several years, and each one of them exemplifies the qualities that any aspiring IT/communications leader would gladly emulate. They’re wonderful to work with, and I can’t thank them enough.