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

With travel to industry events in full swing during October, we had a lot of ground to cover. Jon recapped both events from earlier in the month – Verint, British Telecom and UC Expo – along with previewing upcoming October events that were to take place after our podcast was recorded, namely Cisco WebexOne and NICE Analyst Summit – which took Jon to Zambia. From Chris’s end, he updated us on VON Evolution (now vCon), where Jeff Pulver’s community explored the future of voice and conversations, then WorkTech, where the focus was on the return to office side of hybrid work, and how the corporate real estate world is thinking about these things. Things are never dull here on Watch This Space, and this episode will update you on the worlds of AI, customer experience and future of work in more ways than you might imagine.

On the bigger picture for getting an ROI with AI in the enterprise:

`“There’s huge pressure in enterprises to show an ROI on all that data (from AI)… every line of business has its own needs and priorities for what the data for their lines of business means to them… the pressure on IT now isn’t just about getting optimum network performance – that’s the meta level – but the actual data itself is creating all these new forms of intelligence that AI is harvesting for its learning models.”

NEW FOR WATCH THIS SPACE – as mentioned above, we’ve added two new channels for broader distribution. Aside from listening to us talk about, here’s the gist for the updates:

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 News site. 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.
ALSO NEW FOR WATCH THIS SPACE – but less recent - we’ve now 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 October

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 – 3 for October, all in-person:
- British Telecom Focus 2024, London, Oct. 1 – photos here
- UC Expo, London, Oct. 2-3 – photos here
- NICE Analyst Summit, Livingstone, Zambia, Oct. 21-24 - photos here

Video segments – recorded and published:
- Big UC News – updates on Intermedia, Slack, HP and X, Oct. 2
- UC Today – interviewed during UC Expo, Oct. 2
- EM360 – interviewed during UC Expo, Oct. 2

Video segments – recorded, but not yet published:
- Interview with RingCentral, during UC Expo
- Interview with 8x8, during UC Expo

Awards Judging – am back for the 2024 Talkdesk CX Innovators Awards, and the winners have now been announced

Writing roundup for October – no post for this, but there were two writeups on No Jitter:
- NICE Analyst Summit Takeaways – Windmills, Profitability Rules, Termites and Workflows, Oct. 29
- AI Agents are Change Agents – In More Ways Than One, Oct. 9

Media citings – two during October – you can review them here

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 October:
- I had 24,235 views and 25 posts – about 60% higher than September
- My top LinkedIn post registered 2,370 views
- Overall, 9 posts had 1,000+ views, and 13 had 500+ views

What's Coming? JAA Outlook for November

I have one in-person event for November:
- Talkdesk 2024 Analyst Event, Charleston, SC, Nov. 18-20
Two video segments coming up:
- SCTC – am going to be Steve Leaden’s guest on the Nov. 6 edition of Fireside Chat, where I’ll be reviewing highlights from my recent conferences
- UC Today – will be a panelist for the November edition of Big UC News
Active work to keep watch for:
- Watch for commentary about a new market research study I just finished with a vendor in the customer service space
- New podcast recordings being scheduled now for November in partnership with EM360
- Just finished another white paper for a leading CCaaS vendor about how AI can be used to elevate CX – should be published during November
- For my Future of Work Expo event – running next Feb. 11-13 - here’s the latest e-blast outlining what’s on for the events, the press release announcing the agenda, and Call for Speakers for anyone interested in being on a panel or to propose a new topic
- 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?

… I was a pretty global guy last month, where my airport stops included London, New York, Frankfurt, Johannesburg, Livingstone and Zurich. Not my normal itinerary, and here’s a quick taste of where my travels took me.

First stop, London for the UC Expo – on the Ask the Analyst panel, and at the British Telecom Focus 24 analyst event.

Enroute to Zambia – long layover at Frankfurt. My new best friend for long trips – NapCabs, where you can rent a sleeper pod by the hour – great idea. At the Lufthansa lounge – when in Germany, local beer goes with just about anything.

In Zambia, for the NICE Analyst Summit – the executive Q&A session, with Barry Cooper, Einat Weiss and Barak Eilam. During our safari outing, as he always does, Barak gets a group selfie.

Just a taste of Africa below, and several more photos were in my LinkedIn posts during the event, along with my blog post, which was referenced earlier. First - helicopter view of Victoria Falls – think Niagara Falls, but bigger and more dramatic. Next - my turn to feed the elephants – no doubt this guy is the alpha male for this group.