Industry association Intellect director general, John Higgins CBE, is packing his bags for Brussels at the end of the year to head up DIGITALEUROPE, “the pre-eminent advocacy group of the European digital economy acting on behalf of the information technology, consumer electronics and telecommunications sectors”. Higgins had led Intellect since its establishment in 2002 when the then CSSA (Computer Services & Software Association) merged with a similar association supporting the UK electronics industry.
I hold Higgins in high regard, especially for helping to make Intellect more relevant to the wider industry (see A bright night for Intellect), and hope that his yet to be nominated successor will carry on in much the same vein. I suspect Higgins will miss the ‘shop floor’ contact with the players that he has enjoyed over the past decade, but I am sure he will cope admirably with the undoubtedly more political nature of the European job without entirely ‘going native’! It goes without saying that we wish him well.