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

April was a busy month for industry events, and the main focus for this episode was Jeff Pulver’s vCon event, held in Hyannis, MA. Chris spoke at the event, with the main takeaway being that vCon is a “watch this space” initiative, especially for using AI to derive new value from conversations, including unstructured data. With vCon being early stage, the focus was mainly on laying the groundwork to make this an IETF standard, and proof of concept interop testing. Chris explained how this was a different conference experience, with the participants trying to set the foundation for vCon before it gets on the radar of the hyperscalers. Following this, Jon added his thoughts on other recent events, namely 8x8’s analyst event, speaking at the Cloud Communications Alliance event, and Vector Institute’s Remarkable conference in Toronto.

Jon and Chris on why vCon is a “watch this space” development:

“The key to all of this – it’s going to become standards-based. That’s what makes it real – and, being open source-based, being an IETF standard. With Jeff, having done this with VoIP and the FCC – once it becomes a standard, then it has legitimacy. Then you can build an ecosystem around that, and that’s when the business model starts to take shape. When you get people coming to something like this (attending vCon), and they run a phone company or an ITSP, and they’re interested in this, that’s a real first step.”

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 April

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:

8x8 Industry Analyst Summit, Southampton, UK, April 1-3
Cloud Connections 2025 (Cloud Communications Alliance), St. Petersburgh, FL, April 14-16 (spoke on two panels)
Servion (in partnership with NICE) – led a workshop and second presentation for customers, AI-Driven Innovation in Contact Centers, Hoboken, NJ, April 22

Video segment:

Cloud Connections 2025 – interviewed by Doug Green during the event, April 22

Webinar – The Future is Agentic – in conversation with Cognigy, hosted by CUSTOMER Magazine, April 24
White paper: Getting Started with AI for CX – written for Cisco Webex - published June 2024, but only became accessible now – you can download it here

Writing roundup for April – digest is here on my blog – and if you just read one – this is it: 8x8 Analyst Summit Takeaways – Track Some Mud on the Carpet
Media citings – just one for April
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 April:

I had 37,596 views and 39 posts – third strong month in row, which I think reflects my continued run of recent travel to industry events
My top LinkedIn post registered 1,379 views
Overall, 3 posts had 1,000+ views, and 12 had 500+ views

What's Coming? JAA Outlook for May

Industry events – just one for May – finally, a light travel month:

Global Relay Analyst Summit, May 28-29

Active work to keep watch for:

GoTo - Practically Tomorrow podcast, should publish 2nd week of May
Writing a guest post on how telcos are evolving in the age of AI – will run 2nd or 3rd week of May
Writing an article on AI/CX trends for Contact Center Pipeline, to run in the July issue
Podcast recording later this month with Kane Simms for his VUX World podcast
The AI Show, from UC Today – recorded a guest segment on May 5 – will publish next few days
BCStrategies, Q1 updates and CX news – part of a group podcast recording – will publish 2nd week of May

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?
… Kevin Harrington is an interesting guy, and based on his keynote during Cloud Connections 2025, I’d say that tech vendors could learn some things about how they bring AI to market. If you put his “celebrity investor” persona aside, his messages about building brands and scaling businesses resonated for me.

Across the events I attended during April – along with others over the past few months - there’s a sameness to the messaging from vendors about AI. The widespread FOMO is warranted, as AI is evolving faster than anything we’ve seen before, and everyone knows about its transformational potential. Kevin shared how he pivoted business models with changing technology, and with AI, everyone across the value chain must do the same – vendors, enterprises and channel players.

One of his analogies is about the microphone – “the money doesn’t go to the people who know how the microphone works, it goes to the people who know how to sing”. The more complex the product, the more applicable this is; and in our world, nothing is more complex than AI.

There’s a fine balance to strike between making AI feel accessible, and how it delivers tangible value for buyers and users. I’m saying this not just because that’s what’s I’m seeing in my analyst travels, but also for the types of engagements coming my way now, especially around branding and messaging to stand out in this hyperactive market.