If you call the CIO and explain the situation, he or she will probably tell you that help desk hours are between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. and ask you to file a trouble ticket. If you call the CTO, there’s a good chance he or she will go into the wire closet, check a few things in the patch panel, and get you running again.

InfoWorld’s CTO does a terrific job of explaining why I liked being CTO at my last company, and I why I liked the title as a more appropriate (and, to my mind, prestigious) title than CIO.

On a semi-related note, has anyone else noticed that the print version of InfoWorld has become a glorified pamphlet? When I started getting complimentary subscriptions to InfoWorld about 10 years ago, it was a big, tabloid-sized newsprint magazine of almost 200 pages. Now it’s barely larger than a magazine, printed on slicker paper, and about 40 pages long. It’s a shame that they appear to be in decline. I always liked them because they were the first technology rag that ever had my name in print.