Stories about: Mecca

Vanda Collis was sitting in the late-night glow of her PC, answering e-mail from her home office at 1 a.m., when the telephone rang. Her first thought was that it must be a fax; her second was that it was a possible family emergency. But instead, it was a business call - a consultant in Korea who wanted to line her up as a U.S. business partner for his fledgling Web venture.

Convergence, if it hasn't already sunk in, is well and truly upon us. The old distinctions between telecommunications and networking - voice and long haul on the one hand, corporate data networks onthe other - means less andless every day, and soon will mean next to nothing.

The travel bug has undoubtedly bitten a few information technology contract workers, who often find themselves with a month or more to spare between projects. But Web developer Nancy Andersen, a member of Contractor's Resources Inc. in Iselin, New Jersey, has spent a good part of the past two years combining work with globe-trotting.

As if it were just another Silicon Valley Sunday, Bob Cordaro found himself having to wait for a table at the ever-popular Buck's Restaurant. It was a sign that no matter how much poorer he had become in the past week, life around him continued unchanged. Cordaro, 55, isn't some high-flying venture capitalist or software coder, but one of the thousands in this tech mecca who caught stock-market fever.

The role of business strategist is not a new one to the CIO. Many CIOs have become adept at applying their new people skills and entrepreneurial spirit to their IT initiatives. And with the burgeoning electronic economy, CIOs may have the edge over other executives in their organizations when it comes to leading their companies' business strategies toward the online Mecca.