What’s Up? Part 1- Our Latest Watch This Space Podcast

March was another busy month, with Chris attending Leesman’s research event in NYC, and Jon doing the same for Enterprise Connect in Orlando, along with Cognigy’s Nexus event in Dusseldorf. On this episode, Chris explains the big disconnect between what management and workers want for coming back to the office, and how that’s impacting corporate real estate thinking. For Jon, Agentic AI was the big story at Enterprise Connect, and he reviews why it’s so important, but also how enterprises are struggling to find the best use cases. Another takeaway is why Jon thinks Google’s AI-first approach to CX could make them a dark horse player in the hyper-competitive contact center space. Finally, Jon shares how Cognigy is getting impressive results with Tier 1 customers using Agentic AI – mainly in the EU – and showing what’s possible when AI is deployed effectively.

Jon’s take on orchestration, and a more strategic view of how AI is being used now:

“Companies like NICE, the narrative they’re using – and we’re going to see more of this – is orchestration, as people try to tie all these pieces together, whether it’s collaboration in the office or customer service in the contact center. AI is touching so many pieces now, that to pull it all together and extract distinct value – AI has to work across multiple systems, multiple touch points, and multiple data sets and knowledge bases – and then make it relevant, almost in real time for the end user – and, providing digital assist – by your side, along the way to help you. This is how orchestration affects everything, from before you need it, to when you need it, and after once you’ve used it, to follow up on next steps. This is a more strategic look at the technology.”

NEWISH FOR WATCH THIS SPACE – we’ve added two new channels for broader distribution:
- For EM360, a dedicated website has been created, and hosts the 10 most recent episode. You can read more about this, along with all the related links in this blog post of mine.
- For TMC and Future of Work Expo, TMC is now a media sponsor for the podcast. This does not impact our content or topics in any way, but since the podcast is about the future of work, we’ll talk more about the sponsorship in the context of my Future of Work Expo. There’s a natural tie-in here, as the podcast is another way to support the Expo. In return, the podcast is now in regular banner rotation on three of their sites: TMCnet, our Future of Work Expo website, and their Future of Work Newssite. If you visit any of these sites on a regular basis, sooner or later, you will see banners for Watch This Space podcast, where all those clicks link directly to our WTS website.
AND… we’ve added an additional mail-out for newsletter subscribers, specifically about the podcast. In case you don’t check it out now, it will provide more detail about the episode to encourage you to give it a listen then. Watch for that in about a week’s time!
For those of you who don’t subscribe to our podcast directly from a commercial platform – you can access it any time here on the Watch This Space website. Otherwise, the easiest platforms and sources to find WTS are Apple Podcasts, Google Chrome/Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Overcast, iTunes, Spotify and Amazon Music. Believe it or not, we’re also getting found on LinkedIn, Safari, and Alexa-enabled devices. For a more extensive replay archive, you can access all our podcasts here on my JAA website.

What’s Up? Part 2 – JAA Highlights from March

While the Watch This Space podcast is the main form of original content for this newsletter, Part 2 here is a digest of JAA activities from last month, including my other forms of original content, along with my social media stats. Detail and links for most of these activities can be found on my blog, or posted on my website.

Industry events: three very different conferences, with two being in-person:
- Remarkable, Vector Institute, Toronto, March 4-5 (remote attendance)
- Cognigy Nexus, Dusseldorf, Germany, March 11-13
- Enterprise Connect, Orlando, FL, March 17-20
Industry events add-on: during the week of Enterprise Connect, Nvidia GTC was also running, and I was registered for remote attendance, but could not track the sessions then. Will do this shortly and share takeaways – I did this for last year’s event, and continue to follow Nvidia as they are leading the way with AI.
Video segments:
- At Enterprise Connect – segment 1 – with Doug Green for his Telecom Reseller podcast – here on LinkedIn Live, March 17
- At Enterprise Connect – segment 2 – with Doug Green and Jeff Pulver – here on LinkedIn Live, March 17
- At Enterprise Connect – segment with David Dungay from UC Today, March 18 – not posted yet, sorry
- BC Strategies – Enterprise Connect takeaways, Part 1 (Part 2 ran the next day with other BC Experts) – here on LinkedIn Live, March 27
- Video interview with PolyAI CEO on the impact of AI on CX, EM360 Tech Transformed Podcast, March 13
- Future of Work Expo preview – interviewed by Rich Tehrani on Feb. 11, but not posted until recently

White paper: for NICE - Customer-Centric AI That Encompasses the Entire Business for CX
Judging: I was a judge for the Best of Enterprise Connect Awards, and the winners were announced here, March 17
Writing roundup for March – digest is here on my blog – and if you just read one – this is it: The Death of the Desk Phone?
Media citings – just one for March, published in January, but only recently available
Social media highlights – since these stats change every day, they are just a basic snapshot, but they provide a good sense of reach beyond my blog and newsletter. For my business, I use LinkedIn – I’ve stopped using Twitter/X for some time – so, here are my approximate tallies for LinkedIn during March:
- I had 54,253 views and 56 posts – very similar to February, making this two very strong months in a row for LinkedIn traffic
- My top LinkedIn post registered 18,221 views – aside from an exceptionally high tally for one of my posts in February 2024, this is the highest tally for one post to date for me
- Overall, 11 posts had 1,000+ views, and 19 had 500+ views

What's Coming? JAA Outlook for April

Industry events - three for April, all in-person:
- 8x8 Industry Analyst Summit, Southampton, UK, April 1-3
- Cloud Connections 2025 (CCA), St. Petersburgh, FL, April 14-16 (speaking on two panels)
- Servion (in partnership with NICE) – leading a workshop, AI-Driven Innovation in Contact Centers, Hoboken, NJ, April 22
Active work to keep watch for:
- GoTo - Practically Tomorrow podcast, March 31
- Cognigy webinar with CUSTOMER magazine, broadcasting in April – date TBD
Continued guest posts coming – some with my byline and some without – will post about these as they are published – those with my byline will be shared as they are published
New projects are in play with several vendors, both current and new clients

Hey, Did You Know?
… it sure seems like AI-everywhere, AI-all-the-time lately. For better or worse, there’s nothing bigger – not just in tech, but seemingly our daily lives. For my work as an analyst, I see many shades of AI, and do my best to speak and write about it. The current episode of Watch This Space has a heavy dose of AI, and across my three events last month, here are three different perspectives, all of which am happy to speak further about.

Vector Institute’s Remarkable event, Toronto
I was only able to attend virtually, and if you don’t know, this is one of the world’s leading AI research entities. Their presentations were about pure AI research, so nothing commercial here yet, but a fascinating glimpse into how some of this research is getting done. Am pretty sure I was the only tech analyst there, so it’s very likely this will be new learning for my subscribers.

Cognigy’s Nexus 2025 event, Dusseldorf
In my view, Cognigy is best-in-class for real-world deployments of Conversational AI and Agentic AI in the customer service arena. Am one of only two analysts who attended both this year and last year’s customer event, and in that short time, it’s quite impressive how far their AI capabilities have evolved. I was one of the first to write about Agentic AI, and you’ll be hearing more about Cognigy from me throughout 2025.

Enterprise Connect 2025, Orlando
This is the biggest and most important industry event in the communications technology space, and the show has now ended a long run in Orlando. Next year, the locale will be Las Vegas, and with that, the program will likely be revamped - both to keep the content fresh, and to attract more buyers, something the exhibitors need more of. Earlier in the newsletter, I cited some examples of me talking about the trends around the event, including AI. I came away with very current understanding of where the vendors are with AI offerings, along with what the market is ready to actually deploy, and got to share some of that on two panel sessions.