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

We may never face a more challenging time than the month just past, and hopefully we’ll come out of it alright. One thing that has changed in a hurry is social distancing, and the need for businesses to have as many people working from home as possible. Disruption is when unexpected change happens, and WFH – work from home – is a timely example that nobody was talking about before Coronavirus. Lots for us to talk about, and that’s where this month’s podcast takes us.
As usual, JAA subscribers get to hear our takeaways - right now, in this newsletter. Otherwise, I’ll be posting the podcast publicly on my website in a couple of weeks, so non-subscribers will have to wait a bit.
If you haven’t checked our earlier podcasts, you can do that from the podcast archive on my website. This archive will keep updating as the latest podcast is added, so now from one place, you can access all the most recent podcasts.
Recent podcasts have also featured AI-driven transcripts that complement the audio replay link. This feature comes courtesy of Otter.ai, and I hope you like it. Otter transcribes in real-time, and I should also note that this transcription feature only comes with the newsletter. The publicly-shared posts of our podcasts are audio-only, and for some, that will be enough. But really, wouldn’t you rather be a subscriber?

**Latest Watch this Space Podcast & Transcript, April 2020**

The New Age of Remote Work

What’s Up? Part 2 – More Highlights and Insights from March

Conference roundup – this is how I usually start this section, since it’s the main way I spend my time when not in my office. As per my last newsletter, I was slated to attend a few events in March, including Enterprise Connect, the biggest conference in our space. Sadly, all events are off for the foreseeable future. Some events have been re-booked for August or September, and let’s hope things improve enough by then for business travel to resume.
Work-wise, here are some March highlights:
- Podcasts – in addition to recording this month’s edition of Watch This Space, I had five podcasts published in March, and the links can be found on my blog:
  - Remote working with Monday.com, hosted by EM360
  - Future of Work Expo review, our March Watch This Space podcast
  - Voice bots and audio quality, hosted by No Jitter
  - Our take on Coronavirus, BCStrategies
  - Trends around UC and the contact center, interviewed by 2600Hz
- Webinar – I presented on one last month:
  - Enabling remote working, with Poly and hosted by Metaswitch
- Twitter Live Chat – I haven’t done one of these for a while, but was invited to be part of one on March 26 – was quite good, and very interactive:
  - Hashtag was #FutureTechChat, and title was The New Telecom Economy – here’s the complete thread from the Twitter feed

February writing spotlight – top pick would be my latest No Jitter post – Getting UX Right with Mobile UC.
Here’s my Writing Roundup post for March – it’s a monthly digest of my thought leadership across various channels, including Toolbox.com, Tech Target, No Jitter and BC Strategies.
There was just one media citing for March.
Here are the social media highlights for last month. 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 Twitter and LinkedIn, and here are some approximate tallies for March:
- For LinkedIn – I shared 36 posts, which registered 16,199 views. My top LinkedIn post registered 1,150 views, and 10 posts had 500+ views.
- For Twitter - there were 48,900 impressions, which is a fair drop from February, and is somewhat due to there being no conferences. Also had 150 profile visits, 57 mentions, and 48 tweets.
- My “top tweet” was from an analyst-only update with the management team from Cisco Webex - it had 4,523 impressions. Overall, 8 tweets had 1,000+ impressions.
If you haven’t seen it, there’s a new tab on my website – My Music. This has been in the works for a while, and showcases my fun side, mainly from playing keyboards and guitar with the SIPtones. I’ve posted a few video clips and photos from recent performances – and I have others if you want to see more.

What's Coming? JAA Outlook for April
- With no travel, I had way more time than usual to write, and that worked out well in terms of getting client work done. I’ve been doing a lot writing and recording, and over the course of April, much of this will make it to market in one form or another.
  - White paper on UCaaS
  - White paper on cloud collaboration
  - Market research report on mobile UX for UCaaS
  - Three posts on contact center trends, but no byline
  - Three full-length Q&As with industry executives from different companies
  - Part 1 in a new series for a Canadian provider to help customers migrate to UCaaS
  - Insight report for an MSP to help partners drive UCaaS growth
- I’ve got other things on the go as well, but this should give you an idea of the range of engagements I do as an independent analyst. The work is never dull, and you might be surprised when considering the ways that I can be of service to clients.

Hey, Did You Know?

Video has never been hotter, and I’ve lost track of how many briefings and client meetings I did last month – and I expect more of the same for April. I just wanted to draw attention to how quickly video has become normalized, and how people are finding creative and fun ways to use it. I think it’s very healthy since we’re social creatures, and can only stay cooped up indoors and glued to our screens for so long.

Here’s a good example – I’m part of the SCTC, and they recently had a virtual cocktail hour, which many of you have probably done as well. Why not, and who knows what the fun twist will be for April? Note to self – I need to come up with a fun virtual background!