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

Both of us attended major industry events during June, with Chris at HPE Discover, and myself at NICE Interactions – both in Las Vegas, as it turns out. HPE and NICE are different companies in different spaces, but both were showcasing how they’re pushing the envelope with AI. Given our focus on future of work and digital transformation, Chris noted the impact of AI-driven network technologies on smart buildings and how that can support return to office. With NICE, I reviewed how their vision for AI is taking us to a world where live and virtual agents will work symbiotically, much like the Digital Centaur that may some day come to transform the workplace. Aside from our take on these events, we took some side roads to expound on Vegas’s unique vibe, and how HPE’s acquisition of Juniper is another example of Big Tech getting bigger.

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 new 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 June

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 – two for June, plus a local event:
- Zoholics – Zoho’s customer event, June 4-5, Austin
- NICE Interactions 2024 - June 10-12, Las Vegas
- RingCentral – invited to attend an update session with consultants, June 18, Toronto

Video segments – recorded and published:
- Big UC News – news roundup, including MSFT Teams, Zoom, RingCentral and Avaya – June 12
Video/podcast segments – recorded but not yet published:
- Glenn Goldberg’s soon-to-be-rebooted Parallel Universe Podcast – very fun, coming soon
Industry awards judging – in addition to the 2024 UC Awards, I’m doing judging again for Talkdesk’s 2024 CX Innovators Awards
Writing roundup for June – summary of posts is here on my blog

Social media highlights - since these stats change every day, the metrics are just a basic snapshot, but they provide a good sense of reach beyond my blog and newsletter. For my business, I use LinkedIn – fyi: have now stopped using Twitter/X – so, here are my approximate tallies for LinkedIn during June:
- I had 34,570 views and 35 posts – a bit lighter than May, but fifth month running with over 25,000 views
- My top LinkedIn post registered 5,298 views
- Overall, 4 posts had 1,000+ views, and 14 had 600+ views

What's Coming? JAA Outlook for July

For conferences, am happy to report there is no event travel during July!
Active work to keep watch for:
Two white papers are complete now, and will be publishing soon
Big UC News – was part of the latest roundup of industry news, recorded June 28
NICE webinar on August 8, in support of my new white paper for them
For my Future of Work Expo event – running next Feb. 11-13 - here’s the Call for Speakers for anyone interested in being on a panel or to propose a new topic
This August, I’ll be returning to the North Carolina Electric Cooperatives Technologies Conference in Wilmington, NC for another session on AI use cases – this time with one of the leading conversational AI vendors – details next issue
Continued guest posts coming – some with my byline and some without – will post about these as they are published
New projects are in play with several vendors, both current and new clients

Hey, Did You Know?
… that AI is good at some things, and not-so-good at other things? Often at industry events, there will be a sketch artist doing caricatures, and in my experience, some have been good and others awful. Turns out that AI isn’t any different, at least based on the gallery of images it came up with for attendees at NICE Interactions.
At the event, NICE eschewed the sketch artist, and instead, each of us sat in front of an AI device of some sort for about two seconds, and about two more seconds later, came with its vision of you in the future. Sketch artists work pretty fast, but not this fast!

All we had to do was select a persona type – super-heroes were very popular – and AI did the rest. I actually can’t remember the persona I chose, but here’s what it came up with for me. Somehow, I keep getting younger in the future, and I’ll take this guy’s hair over mine any day, but is that really me? I guess this is my post-Apocalypse Fonz look, and if AI feeds me this image often enough, I’ll have to believe it. Are you ready for your AI close-up, or would you rather just stick with a selfie?