Editor's Blog: Coming soon - our list of the UK's top CIOs

Here at silicon.com we spend a lot of time talking to - and listening to - CIOs.

What constantly impresses me is how wide the role of the CIO is - and how big an impact the decisions they make can have on their organisation. From my experience I'd say few other executives have so much opportunity to improve the fortunes of their business as CIOs, whether it is by increasing efficiency or opening up new routes to market.

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Recently I've had conversations with CIOs ranging from the difficulties of travelling abroad with bodyguards to exploiting the potential of virtual worlds and getting succession planning right.

This reflects how wide CIOs' remits can be, and the issues that concern them. And, of course, getting the most out of technology is a core part of the job - which means issues such as virtualisation, consolidation and open source crop up too.

And so, to celebrate the importance of CIOs, for the second time - following the fantastic success of last year's CIO50 - we're compiling a list of the top CIOs in the UK.

Our panel of experts, which includes leading CIOs, members of the silicon.com CIO Jury, executive recruitment experts and silicon.com's own deputy editor Andy McCue, have been searching high and low for the top business and technology executives in the land.

You're going to have to wait a little while longer for the results - the whole thing will be unveiled to the top CIOs at an exclusive reception in central London on 11 June, and following that we'll have all the details on silicon.com.

You can find out a little bit more about this year's CIO50 - and a bit more about last year's - here.

Editor's choice - three things you should check out on silicon.com this week:

Find out exactly what a QR code is and why you should care in our QR code cheat sheet. Then read what Seb Janacek reckons is in store for iPhone fans. And if that leaves you wanting more, I found this week's CIO Jury fascinating - not just because of the voting but also the reasons given for why the CIO Jury prefers a Qwerty keyboard.