Editor's Blog: Flying high with the UK's best CIOs

CIOs: high-fliers or heads in the clouds? Last week both these terms would have been entirely accurate at the launch of the annual silicon.com CIO50 list. This year we decided to celebrate the UK's best IT leadership at a fitting location for the high achievers we had assembled - a reception 40 floors above the City of London at Tower 42, formerly the NatWest Tower.

For those of you who don't know how we put the CIO50 list together it's probably worth a quick recap.

The list really is driven by silicon.com's CIO community. The first thing we do is take soundings from dozens of CIOs to build up a long list of who they think are the best business and technology leaders in the UK, which our expert panel then sifts to come up with a list of the 50 most innovative CIOs.

And then we unveiled the list at what is now the UK's premier CIO event.

You can read the full report here, and find out more about what makes each of this year's CIO50 tick. You can even download a PDF including all the profiles if you'd like.

It was great to meet up with many of the CIOs that we count as friends of silicon.com - some we've known for many years, and others who are more recent acquaintances. It was an evening of fascinating conversation that gave me and the rest of the silicon.com team a real insight into the big issues facing our readers - and will help inform how we continue to provide the very best content for you.

Having covered the industry for more than a decade I would say that this year's CIO50 was the most successful CIO event the UK has ever seen, bringing together the country's business and technology leaders in one place to swap war stories, share ideas - and of course drink champagne and have a good time. It really was a shame to come back down to earth at the end of the evening.

You can see some of the CIOs talking about their secrets of good leadership at the event here. You can tell how high up we were because the top of the Gherkin is visible in the background!

There will be more video appearing in the CIO50 special report over the next few weeks - so stay tuned for more wisdom from the UK's best CIOs.

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

See how the silicon.com team got on when asked to abseil down a building for charity. Or check out our photos of a data centre being built. And if you've still got time why not take the silicon.com skills survey.