Season 4 of Watch This Space continues with an episode titled “Making Work from Home Work – Are We Putting Too Much Trust in Big Tech?”, and is exactly what the title suggests. In the wake of conspiracy theories poisoning our democracy, along with unchecked market power from Big Tech, there’s a lot to be concerned about, not just for a free society, but a safe and productive workforce. Too much ground to cover in one podcast, but I hope this episode is thought-provoking, and there’s more to come.
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 January

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 – only two events for January, and that was a welcome let-up from the past few months, which were impossibly busy:
- January 18 – Wildix 2021 UCC Summit
- January 28 – Uniphore Conversational Automation 2021
Project work - key highlights for last month, and links to some of these can be found in my January blog posts:
- Returned to serve as a judge for Oracle Startup Idol 3
- Guest blog post for NextPlane on unified presence
- Guest post for SIPPIO on voice-enabling Microsoft Teams
- Insight report for Upstream Works, Part 3 – Embracing Contact Center AI in 2021
Podcasts – participated in 3 of them with BCStrategies:
- Best practices for video meetings
- 2021 predictions for the collaboration space
- 2020 year in review
January writing spotlight – my latest No Jitter post: The Hybrid Workplace – New Opportunities for Collaboration, Part 1
Here’s my Writing Roundup post for January – 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
Newsletter updates – during January there were two notable additions, long overdue – with more coming next month:
- Thought Leadership section – Authored Articles – totally updated with current examples
- Newsletter Archive – finally added this to the website with all the 2020 editions, and 2019 is coming next – now you can review earlier newsletters you might have missed or deleted, plus this adds a new layer of content that’s searchable
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 January:
- For LinkedIn – I had 16,558 views and 28 posts – lower traffic compared to December, which is in line with there being fewer industry events last month.
- My top LinkedIn post registered 1,164 views and overall, 7 posts had 800+ views.
- For Twitter – there were 15,500 impressions, 789 profile visits, 55 mentions, and 25 tweets – impressions and number of tweets were down from December, but profile visits and mentions were up.
- My “top tweet” was for our BCStrategies podcast on video meetings, with 3,685 impressions. Overall, 7 tweets had 500+ impressions – pretty light month.
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 February

Just two virtual events on tap so far for February, but that can change in a hurry:
- February 4 – Alcatel Lucent Enterprise Connex21 Analyst Conference
- February 16-17 - UCX Tech Predictions Mini Summit
Other activities to watch for during February:
- Speaking on a panel session about the state of CPaaS for UC Today
- Guest post for a leading session border controller vendor
- Preparing for two March webinars – one about cloud contact center, and one about migrating from legacy telephony to the cloud
- New series of guest blog posts for a contact center vendor
This update is shorter than normal, but during the first month of 2021, I was very active developing my project pipeline, both with current and prospective clients – stay tuned

Hey Did You Know?

…. that the future sure looks a lot like the past. Here’s a good example – a flashback blog post of mine from December 2009, with a look-ahead to the next decade – the 2010’s. Time sure flies, huh?

For years I’ve been saying that the distinctions between telcos, cabelcos, ISPs, etc. will eventually go away, and a new order will emerge. Nobody knows yet if the new order looks like Google or a super communications entity built from the best pieces of telcos like AT&T (News - Alert). However, I’m pretty sure the answer will become clear over the course of the coming decade, and my gut says that how privacy is handled will have a lot to do with it.

Well, those distinctions for classes of service providers have largely gone away, but at that time, I don’t think anyone foresaw how Amazon could become a player in our space, or how the rise of streaming services like Netflix would almost single-handedly destroy the cable business. Who knew? I guess that’s what keeps this space so interesting.

Also, our concerns a decade ago about privacy were – and remain – valid, but this was way before AI matured and became a driving force in the world of communications. Not to mention how big tech then has become Big Tech today, and the struggle to preserve personal privacy now sure feels like a losing battle.

Sidebar - if that’s on your mind, we explore things further on this month’s podcast, so you might want to give that a listen. With that flashback to 2009 noted, it’s time to fast-forward to 2021, and focus on what’s coming in the current decade. If I’m still in the game in 2029, I’ll certainly do this look-back again, but until then, I’ll just stay in the moment, and chronicle things one month at a time.