It's that time of year when we begin planning our spring Forums. Our Security & Risk Forum EMEA will take place in London, March 17th and 18th. Planning and content creation for that Forum is already well underway and we're looking forward to another great event. But I also wanted to highlight our spring IT Forum. Mark your calendars for May 25-27 in Las Vegas and June 8-10 in Barcelona.  Not only is there a dedicated track for Security and Risk professionals at IT Forum but there is an opportunity for Security & Risk pros to learn about broad IT  challenges and trends. I believe this is critical because in order for security organizations to become much more proactive and less reactive, they have to understand what's happening across IT and not just narrowly within security. We need to be ready for the next major business or IT shift before it happens.

We've come up with three potential draft themes and need your vote for the best IT Forum 2011 theme:

1. Unleash your empowered enterprise.

As technology becomes more accessible through mediums beyond IT's control, you have but one choice: Get proactive by empowering employees, or swim against the current. Successful BT leaders will react not by blocking access but by lending their expertise to increase the chances of technology success and empowering the users to solve customer and business problems. This year's IT Forum will provide a blueprint for reaping the benefits of your empowered organization — complete with case studies, methodologies, and step-by-step advice tailored to each IT role.

2. Capitalize on the intersection of business and technology.

IT leaders have long struggled to deliver business and technology alignment. But alignment implies a waterfall process: decide on a business strategy, and then build your technology on that foundation. Today, our businesses move too fast for the traditional IT model. Instead, Business Technology leaders must join the leaders of their lines of business to create business and technology strategy simultaneously. That means working with new business partners inside and outside your organization, operationalizing innovation through standards, and above all, saying, "yes, and…" instead of "yes, but…" This year, we'll dedicate IT Forum to building bridges to new business partners, scaling innovative solutions, and co-creating business and technology strategy.

3. Industrialize business technology for future performance.

Today's empowered employees and customers provision themselves with a multitude of tools and technologies.  But it's ruthless standardization of the underlying technologies and processes that have made this flood of customer-driven and customer-created innovation possible.  And sustaining that rate of innovation and growth will require the next phase of standardization — industrialization.  This year, we'll devote IT Forum to planning, designing, and operating your business technology to industrial standards.

To cast your vote, please click here. We’ll be tallying the votes and announcing the theme you helped pick in early November. Thank you!