Nordic IT Association: Leading Innovation in the Nordic Region

By Erika Rosenstein

Nordic IT Association is a non for profit private research and members organisation delivering executive education and expert level workshops, with a sole mission to assist Nordic organizations to improve their business performance and company objectives through best practice strategic IT sourcing and business led alignment.

I had the pleasure to interview its President, Alexander Reay, recently speaker at the Nordic Blockchain Conference in Copenhagen. Alexander has 20+ years of experience and was nominated Deloitte Entrepreneur of the Year two times. He is currently leading the Nordic IT Association.

Nordic IT Association: how did you come up with this idea?

The idea sprang out of the lack of knowledge sharing between C-level executives across the Nordic region. What started as a small meetup of like-minded technology professionals, quickly started to gain momentum and we are where we are today, with over 2000 members.

What are the challenges that you have faced so far?

Major challenges have been ensuring a platform for collaboration. The pandemic caused a slow down of our in person events obviously. The major challenge was to digitize our platform and service offering to maintain the networking and knowledge sharing services for our members.

What are your plans for 2023?

The Nordic IT Association is developing a number of training programs focused on emerging technologies, such as Distributed Ledger, Applied Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Security and Digital Transformation. This in line to support the growing need to both educate and employ a growing need of digital specialists. There has been a huge skills gap, which has been further strained by the rapid change into a remote way of working. Cloud deployment and migration, in particular, have accelerated at a meteoric pace, leaving the region with a desperate need for cloud and technology savvy professionals.