Season 4 of Watch This Space continues with an episode titled “Zoom/Five9 Deal and Back to the Office – Really?”. Our timing was good to talk about perhaps the biggest tech deal this year in our space, the acquisition of Five9 by Zoom. Many implications to consider, especially for the remaining pure play contact center vendors, with more moves no doubt to come. With summer beckoning and pandemic fears easing, we also explored how crowds are back now for many sporting events, live music, etc., but return to office – not so much.

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.
If you don’t know where to subscribe to Watch This Space, it’s posted now on many of the leading platforms. More are in the works, and I’ll soon be adding links to all of these on the WTS website. Currently, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, and Stitcher.
The Watch This Space 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 – JAA Highlights from July

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 one - Twilio analyst update, July 15
Webinars:
- Managing hybrid work for Ingram Micro Canada, July 6
- Strategies for contact centers to adopt digital channels for NovelVox, July 22
Podcast - Zoom’s acquisition of Five9, BCStrategies, July 28
Podcast recording – security issues for hybrid working, EM360 – will run early August
Industry Event - UC Awards 2021, live broadcast announcing the winners, for which I served as a judge, July 29
July writing – pretty light output, but my pick would be: “Genesys Xperience – My Perspectives on DX and CX”, on BCStrategies, June 30 (technically June, but was fresh for all of July)
Writing roundup – here’s my July summary
Media citings – just one for July
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 June:
- For LinkedIn – I had 13,314 views and 13 posts – tallies are down about half from June levels – due to being offline much of last month
- My top LinkedIn post registered 1,446 views and overall, 4 posts had 800+ views
- For Twitter – there were 15,400 impressions, 2,304 profile visits, 54 mentions, 16 tweets, and 4 new followers – about half less for impressions and mentions, but the other metrics were about the same from June levels
- My “top tweet” was about the UC Awards event, with 3,578 impressions
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 August

Event-wise August is quiet – as expected – but the Fall is already quite crowded – again, as expected – with a mix of in-person and virtual events
In terms of client work, here are the highlights for active projects:
- Working on a new white paper about the value of UCaaS and CCaaS together
- Last of my 6-part blog series for a contact center vendor runs this month
- Publishing an article on the semiconductor space and global supply chain issues
- Publishing an article on how channel partners can build a cloud-based voice practice
- Conducting a livestream fireside chat on LinkedIn with the CSO of a major OEM
- Planning a webinar and a series of articles for a new contact center client