Season 4 of Watch This Space kicks off with an episode titled “Thinking About Bigger Use Cases for AI”, and builds on a talk I recently saw from Dr. Michio Kaku about how AI can be used to help defeat COVID-19. There is nothing bigger or more pressing for the world to solve right now, and this is the moment AI is really built for. If that doesn’t catch your interest, I don’t know what will, so it’s on you if you don’t give our this-is-how-we-save-the-world podcast a listen.
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.
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 December

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 – another busy month of events to track, but the content was rich, and a great way to round out 2020:
- December 1 - RingCentral Analyst Day
- December 1-4 – NEC Visionary Week 2020
- December 2 – Pexip Analyst Day
- December 2-3 – Genesys Analyst and Influencer Day
- December 8-9 – Cisco WebexOne
- December 8-9 – Google Public Sector Summit
- December 14-18 (and beyond) - Amazon re:Invent
Project work - key highlights for last month, and links to some of these can be found in my December blog posts:
- Presented on 2 more Fireside Chats for SCTC – variations on the topic of AI and why it’s a great opportunity for consultants – Parts 4 and 5, December 2 and 9
- Completed a series of 3 Insight Reports for a leading Canadian contact center vendor - the first two have been published, with the third coming in January
- Presented on a RingCentral webinar about the benefits of cloud telephony
- Featured in a video segment for EM360 – Top 5 Collaboration Trends for 2021
- Published a lengthy Q&A with Steve Johnson of Ingate Systems about the state of the session border controller market on BCStrategies
December writing spotlight – got two top picks for this month: What Contact Centers Can Learn from the Tampa Bay Rays in Customer Magazine, and A Better Way to Do AI: Focus on the Big Problems for No Jitter
Here’s my Writing Roundup post for December – 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 one citation
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 December:
- For LinkedIn – I had 22,115 views and 43 posts – compared to November, total views were down about 9%, but I had more posts
- My top LinkedIn post registered 1,077 views and overall, 8 posts had 700+ views
- For Twitter – there were 52,400 impressions, 683 profile visits, 44 mentions, 45 tweets and 1 new follower – impressions were up 26% from November, and profile visits spiked, with over twice as many as November
- My “top tweet” was during RingCentral Analyst Day, with 9,624 impressions – likely an all-time high. Overall, 5 tweets had 2,000+ impressions, and 14 had 800+.

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 January

Just one virtual event on tap so far for January, but that can change in a hurry:
- January 18 - Wildix Virtual UC&C Summit 2021
Other activities to watch for during January:
- Guest blog post for a new client about how enterprises can truly unify their fragmented approach to collaboration
- Market sizing project for a vendor in the collaboration space
- Preparing a presentation for a February webinar for a leading UCaaS player
- New series of guest blog posts for a contact center vendor
- Guest post for a session border controller vendor
- Returning as a judge for the next round of Oracle Startup Idol

Hey Did You Know?

We can’t move on from 2020 fast enough, but it turned out to be my busiest year ever. Am grateful for the steady workload and clutch of new clients, and it sure looks like more of the same for 2021.

I wouldn’t expect any of my subscribers to be up on the full range my activities, so here’s one way to do that – my 2020 by the numbers. Most of these are updates from last year, but given how busy things have been, I’ve added some new metrics, including my social media tallies.

Social Media – 2020 by the Numbers