People  have asked why this blog is called “The Accidental CIO”?

It actually comes from an interview I did back in 2006. I was asked while we were setting up, how I got into IT and I said that is was actually an accident. I had stumbled into IT in the late 70’s as a way of funding my music career back then. As a jobbing musician the important thing to me was to find a job that had the most flexible hours and paid the most money.

As a result, I took my first IT job in Data Centre Ops because the company had a shift system that was flexible enough for me to fit my gig schedule around. Add to that the fact that they paid particularly good shift allowances and you got 4 days off per shift rotation and, to my mind, it was a no brainer.

In truth, I never actually intended IT to be a career and my progression happened more as a result of opportunistic behaviour than by any grand design. As new roles presented themselves, I simply embraced them; as my philosophy has always been to size opportunities as a direct preference to having that aweful “what if” feeling.

Anyway, having worked in media for 8 years, you’d have thought I’d known better than to think that these comments were “off the record” and would not form part of the article. How wrong I was. The piece began “Accidental CIO, Ian Cohen …only began his career in IT by chance…. ”

So despite possibly sounding like a CIO who bumps into things, that’s how I (and this blog) became The Accidental CIO.