Letter from the community director – Keeping communities fresh

CHANGE AND GROWTH – KEEPING COMMUNITIES FRESH

We’ve been very busy at CFO Enterprises in the past year. One of the things that’s kept us invigorated and inspired has been the launch of another executive community (in addition to CFO South Africa and CHRO South Africa), in the form of CIO South Africa.

This new community of IT executives had had an astonishing upward trajectory, thanks to the referrals from the CFOs and CHROs that we already know. These referrals are a great endorsement of everything that we do, so if you passed our details onto the IT leaders in your organisation, thank you very much! (And if you haven’t, please put them in touch!) Through this community launch, I was given the opportunity to observe the cycle from the beginning. We met with many CIOs, explained to them what we did, and started engaging with them through our media products (CIO-SA. co.za and the newly launched CIO magazine). And then we started inviting them to events. There’s something magical in bringing a group of likeminded executives together for the first time. We pull out all the stops in creating great events, of course, but the secret sauce is in the community members themselves, being given a platform on which they can interact with, learn from and grow among their peers. As we always say, it’s your community – tell us what you want from it. The CFO South Africa community is a lot further along in its journey than the CIOs are. But there’s a lot to be reminded of and to re-learn from a new community’s launch. It has given me the opportunity to reinvest in what we do, seeing the value that it provides for an entirely new group of executives. So, here’s to continuing to build our most established community. CFO South Africa goes from strength to strength but never strays from its founding values – of helping finance executives to build their knowledge, networks and careers, through down-to-earth yet valuable engagements, events and media.

Of course, change is a constant in any organisation, and CFO South Africa is certainly no exception. Community manager Brian Chivere has accepted a great professional opportunity and has moved on. So after a long history of working with CFOs as a managing editor, editor in chief and then content director, I am now taking the reins as executive community director, and you should be hearing a lot more from me as I support this community in everything that we do. Please drop me an email if there’s anything you’d like from CFO South Africa – this is YOUR community.

Warmest regards,

Georgina Guedes

Executive Community Director CFO South Africa gguedes@cfo.co.za +27 83 651 2789