The long months

As summer starts to close in - complete with sandstorms - the business community is hastily wrapping up the last few regional events before the heat becomes too oppressive, and all eyes are starting to turn towards the autumn - and, for the IT community, to GITEX Technology Week.

There's a tendency among vendors and some larger end users to keep their major announcements and projects signings for the show - perfectly natural, as the eyes of the region will be firmly focused on the show. However, the sheer number of exciting launches and deals at the show means even the hardiest observer can be left with "IT fatigue".

It also seems a shame to deprive people of interesting announcements through the summer - arguably the time when the Middle East needs a distraction (beyond the smiling-faced antics of the little yellow terror we have here in Dubai). More and more people - senior and not-so-senior - are staying put for the summer, or at least remaining connected to the office, and want to remain productive.

At ACN, we recognise that those long summer months need to be filled with something - and we've done our best to oblige.

Launching next month will be the ACN Middle East IT Survey, which will run throughout the summer. Following on from our recent Saudi Arabia survey, we want to hear from IT professionals across the region, specifically looking at the types of projects that are under way and being planned in the enterprise space. We'll be announcing the results of the survey in October - ahead of GITEX - and we hope to shed a little light onto the region's current IT priorities. However, with the best will in the world, completing the survey will only take around ten minutes at the most - this leaves an awful lot of summer to fill.

This is the perfect opportunity to put together an entry for the ACN Arab Technology Awards, especially with the nominations closing on August 17. The quieter months are a good time to look back at some recent major implementations and pick the best of these to nominate.

We've already had a lot of enquiries from companies across the region, and I'm looking forward to seeing nominations for a number of the projects that are out there. Following the interest in last year's successful nominees, I get the impression that there's an even greater impetus for IT professionals to put their best projects forward.

The ACN Arab Technology Awards are your chance to show off the best you can deliver - and, I hope, are definitely worth giving up a little of the summer for.

Eliot Beer is the editor of Arabian Computer News.