This month’s episode is titled “Why Zoom is Much More than Video, Plus Keith Jarrett and Yes, Alicia Keys”, and just like last month, we covered a lot of ground. There’s just SO much innovation happening with cloud, AI, and collaboration technologies, and October was an exceptionally busy month for industry events.
Takeaways from these October events could fill several podcast episodes, and while we tried to talk about highlights from three majors from last month – Zoom, Slack and Twilio – the Zoomtopia event commanded most of our time. Like Pacman, Zoom seems to be gobbling up everything video these days, so it’s not surprising, and while all the attention on them was warranted, these other companies are doing equally innovative things.
Wearing our music-is-our-passion hats, we added a new twist to the podcast with an impromptu segment that’s all about music, and only a tiny bit about tech. Just because. As per our tagline, we’re two analog guys searching for the soul of tech in a digital world, and music has a lot to do with it. Expect more of the same next month, although we could just as well veer into cinema, literature, sports, pop culture, cooking, or whatever else seems in the moment. Gotta keep it fresh!
If you 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.
As time allows, I have a long list of podcast platforms to add Watch This Space to, so please bear with me. It’s only on a couple right now, but the list will soon grow, and they’ll be listed on the website for reference.
If you don’t yet know, this new WTS website will host our episodes for 2020 and beyond. The site is formatted specifically for podcasts, including an embedded player so you can listen directly from the site – check it out here: www.watchthisspace.tech. Our earlier podcasts – Seasons 1 and 2 – can be accessed here on my JAA website.

What’s Up? Part 2 – More Highlights and Insights 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 the previous month, including my other forms of original content, and my social media stats.
Virtual conference roundup – as with September, last month was hectic – nine virtual events – that’s a record for me:
- October 7-9 – Slack Frontiers
- October 14-15 – Zoomtopia
- October 14-15 – SCTC Annual Conference
- October 15 – Huawei Global Innovation Summit
- October 26-27 – Mitel Analyst Event
- October 26-28 – Calix ConneXions
- October 26-28 – OpenText World 2020
- October 28-29 – Cisco Global Partner Summit - Media and Analyst Event
- October 28 – Fuze Productfest
Otherwise, here are the working highlights for last month, and links to some of these can be found in my October blog posts:
- Presented on a webinar with Eventus about Big Data and the contact center, hosted by TMC
- Guest post published on UC Today about direct routing from Sippio and AudioCodes for Microsoft Teams
- First guest post for Smarsh about challenges posed by new forms of voice embedded in collaboration applications for the Finserv sector
October writing spotlight – top pick would be my latest for BC Strategies: The Hybrid Workplace – Dual Set of Challenges for Driving Collaboration
Here’s my Writing Roundup post for October – it’s a monthly digest of my thought leadership across various channels, including Tech Target, No Jitter and BC Strategies
Media citings – on the light side, with just two citings
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 Twitter and LinkedIn, and here are some approximate tallies for October:
- For LinkedIn – in September, I had 43,115 views - highest tally to date, and October blasted past that with a new high for me – 55,002 views, a 28% jump from the month prior.
- During October, I shared 70 posts on LinkedIn – another high – up 49% from September, which had been my previous high for posts.
- My top LinkedIn post registered 4,196 views – another high - followed by one at 3,056 views. Overall, 5 posts had 2,000+ views, and 14 posts had 1,000+ views.
- For Twitter - there were 56,900 impressions, 266 profile visits, 65 mentions, 70 tweets and 4 fewer followers – other than losing a few followers, the metrics are notably up from September or trending slightly higher
- My “top tweet” was during Twilio SIGNAL, with CEO Jeff Lawson doing a live interview with Barack Obama - it had 3,366 impressions. Overall, 13 tweets had 1,000+ impressions, and 31 had 500+.
Updates were recently added about my musical interests, with both new video clips and photos. You can find all this on the My Music tab, and I continue to mention this here in case new subscribers don’t know about my fun side.

What's Coming? JAA Outlook for November

Unlike October, only one virtual event so far for this month – but others could very well come up:
- November 3 - Cisco Canada’s Partner Summit
Otherwise, two live events for clients are on the calendar - check my blog and social feeds for details:
- November 12 – Contact center webinar with Lifesize, hosted by Channel Partners
- November 12 – Twitter chat event with Mitel, about CX challenges with COVID-19 – in support of an upcoming white paper of mine
Wearing my SCTC hat, I’m going to be a featured presenter over a 3-part series on AI, which is part of our very popular weekly Fireside Chats – these are live events, and you can register for them here on the SCTC site
- November 4 – The AI Opportunity – New Value and New Horizons for Consultants
- November 11 – AI in the Contact Center
- November 18 – AI and Next Level Applications
Other activities to watch for during November:
- A 3-part insight series on contact center themes going into 2021 – at least 2 of these will run this month
- Follow-on article for a leading contact center magazine about themes explored in last month’s webinar with Eventus
- Preview for a December webinar I’m doing with a leading UCaaS provider about migrating SMBs to cloud communications
- White paper about migrating enterprises to the cloud for a leading UC vendor, adapted for a leading service provider
- A Q&A interview I did with the CEO of a leading SBC vendor, publisher TBD

Hey Did You Know?

… virtual events can be fun and cool?

That was the theme last month, where I shared my screenshots here of notable speakers and performers from the various virtual events I attended. Big names like Barack Obama and Trevor Noah are hard to beat, but there were lots of A-listers to go around during last month’s busy schedule of virtual events. Again, all screenshots are mine. Pretty nice mix here, and I didn’t have to leave home to see any of them!

Thought leaders you should follow – and if you don’t, am happy to tell you why: