In his classic work describing the state of the Chief Technology Officer discipline ”The Role of the CTO”, Tom Berray of Cabot Consultants articulates four models of CTOs:

• The Infrastructure Manager
• The Big Thinker
• The Technology Visionary and Operations Manager
• The External-facing Technologist

These well defined models were based on discussions with hundreds of technologists as well as written surveys. It remains the definitive work on CTO roles, and has been referenced by some of the greats, including the personal blog of Amazon CTO Werner Vogels. Werner writes there: “I believe Tom Berray’s quadrant gives the best framework for reasoning about what makes CTOs successful.” I have to agree.

As a CTO, I immediately appreciated Tom’s groundbreaking work in describing the community, since it helped me talk with people about my own role. Too frequently people misunderstand what a CTO does, in part because CTOs perform different roles in different enterprises. Ambiguity can impede effectiveness so the clarity of this model has been very helpful.

Ambiguity over the role can also contribute to challenges for organization seeking a new CTO, which leads to another important aspect of Tom’s work. He provides a mapping of CTO roles to organizational needs in a way that can help companies determine the best type of CTO for their needs.

If you are preparing a search for a CTO, a study of Tom’s framework can help provide context which can ensure you are looking for the right set of skills. If you already have an executive on your team responsible for technology strategy, you may want to ask them if they are familiar with this study, since it may help them in their dialog with others over their role.

Bob Gourley is the co-founder and CTO of Crucial Point LLC and is the former CTO of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Bob blogs on enterprise IT at CTOvision.com

Some of you might recall when Time Magazine named YOU as their person of the year for 2006. My brother was applying for jobs at the time, and I suggested (partly in jest) that he should add to the resume that he was named Time’s person of the year for 2006. Sadly, the prospective employer was less than amused.

Washington Technology editor-in-chief Nick Wakeman isn’t anointing you person of the year, but what he did announce earlier this week is quite powerful: you the reader can be editor by suggesting story ideas or themes for upcoming coverage.

I like the way Nick has gone about this for a couple of reasons. One, I’ve always found, just by interacting in casual conversations with individuals at various levels of a government technology provider, that they often are seeing things the rest of us miss. As he references in the blog post, the editor-in-chief has always viewed Washington Technology as a community publication, and realizes that there is dynamic content and knowledge simmering out there in the government technology community - and this is a great way to tap into it.

So for those readers who have spotted a trend that you think the publication overlooked or perhaps another angle to approach an issue from, shoot Nick an email at the address he provides on the blog (or, has a few brave souls have done you can post them in the blog comments section). Skip the fluffy marketing pitch on why your company is the latest and greatest though, as no doubt his inbox is filled with plenty of those.