As a first-time attendee at HIMSS this year (#HIMSS13), I was pleasantly surprised by the breadth and depth of the experience—wall-to-wall innovation (everything from virtual hospitals, to physical bed technologies, to mobile phone security) in a space the size of eight football fields.

If I felt any disappointment, it was only at the relative lack of federal healthcare representation—a criticism I made at RSA last week as well. That said, there were enough federal executives, partners, and integrators at HIMSS to make the experience wholly worthwhile.

I was indoctrinated in the healthcare field about a year ago. The most difficult part was learning how to filter out the extraneous noise so that I could focus on the pressing issues for government.

Even now, I struggle to find clarity and consistency in the broader healthcare market. In practice, the infrastructure of "all things medical" is largely proprietary, which makes things more...

Day 2 has started and all the impressions from Day 1 are being gathered and processed. Asia has a huge representation and yesterday I met Japanese, Chinese and Koreans every two meters in the exhibition. It is clearly a global show where all and everyone in the industry take part. Some of my key observations and reflections from yesterday I have gathered here. More to come today!

Phablets and affordable devices with LTE functionality

More tablets getting to the market and prices are increasingly more competitive where Lenovo was launching multiple models where Acer Iconia Tab A700, Huawei MediaPad 10 FHD and Google Nexus 10 are the key competitors. The Lenovo A3000 and A1000 both feature 7" displays, and will allow for tablet adoption in emerging regions. On the phablet side (phone/tablet), Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is the biggest and...

This year, I made it my New Year's resolution to adopt social media and all that it is.

Time is, of course, always the enemy. This endeavor has taken some discipline, but it’s also given me clarity of purpose and reminded me of my passion for learning.

So, there’s no turning back now; I am officially into the deep end of the pool.

And with that in mind, I’d like to promote two articles I read this weekend, one from @SteveCase about the “sharing economy," and the other from Symantec’s new CIO @stephengillett about the “circular economy”.

As I read these two (distinct) pieces, it occurred to me that they might represent a rather elegant evolution.

The “sharing economy” – which emphasizes sharing of assets over outright ownership of assets in order to reduce waste – is certainly nothing too foreign....

If they ever put the federal technology sector in charge of the Oscars, it’s likely to bear some resemblance to the first annual FedScoop 50 Awards, which was held with great success on November 28th at the Hay Adams Hotel in Washington, D.C.

On a glamorous night, with 150+ federal technology leaders on-hand (including attendees from the White House, Department of Defense, and numerous civilian agencies), FedScoop honored 50 of the federal IT community’s “brightest minds and innovators of 2012.”

Among them, our own Gigi Schumm received the prestigious Industry Leadership Award for her ongoing commitment to supporting the federal government through faster knowledge sharing, deeper thought leadership, and an unprecedented level of public/private cooperation.

Gigi stood in great company Wednesday night, with fellow award-winners Steven VanRoekel (...