Season 4 of Watch This Space continues with an episode titled “How to Make Virtual Work Work and Where Emerging Technologies Can Help”. Labor Day is a good time to think about the longer-term implications of virtual work, and we explore how this checks many boxes for workers, but less so for management. We also discuss how the world of consulting represents a good model for making this work, along with where emerging technologies can serve a higher purpose to build culture.

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 August

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. More detail for most of these will be on my blog.

Virtual conference roundup – none, but a whole lot coming next month
LinkedIn Live event – this was a first timer for me, but I hosted a livestream event on my LinkedIn feed, in conversation with the CSO of Huawei USA about cybersecurity, data privacy and open source – details to watch the replay are later in this newsletter
New kudo – was named a Top 50 Contact Center Twitter Account to Follow by the folks at Playvox
Podcast – in conversation with Ireland-based Arkphire about supporting home-based workers, hosted by EM360
August writing – had a mix of long and short pieces, but my pick would be this: “Spotlight on Global Supply Chain Management – Lessons Learned from the Semiconductor Chip Shortage”, posted on my blog, August 5
Writing roundup – here’s my August summary
Media citings – had two of these during August
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 August:
- For LinkedIn – I had 11,968 views and 20 posts – tallies are similar to July, but with more posts
- My top LinkedIn post registered 1,142 views and overall, 7 posts had 600+ views
- For Twitter – there were 14,900 impressions, 1,512 profile visits, 26 mentions, 12 tweets, and 2 new followers – a bit lighter than July
- My “top tweet” was about my LinkedIn Live event, with 1,572 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 September

August was quiet on the event front – I’m not complaining – but the Fall is busy right out of the gate, with several virtual events that I’ll be tracking:
- Big 5G Event, Aug. 31-Sept. 2
- Five9 CX Summit, Sept. 1-2
- Zoomtopia, Sept. 13-14
- NEC Visionary Week 2021, Sept. 16-17
- Salesforce Dreamforce, Sept. 21-23
- Nokia Algorithm World, Sept. 21
- Enterprise Connect, Sept. 27-29 - will be speaking – at the moment, the event will be hybrid, but I will only be virtual – details below
At Enterprise Connect, I’ll be giving my fourth update on the state of AI and speech technology in the enterprise. I had every intention of presenting in-person, but given the current state of things – especially in Florida – I’ll only be doing this virtually. My talk will be Tuesday, September 28 at 2pm ET – here’s a preview article of my update on No Jitter, along with details to register. I hope you can join me!
Also, for Enterprise Connect, if you haven’t registered to attend in-person yet, you can save $400 by using this link!
In terms of client work, here are the highlights for active projects:
- New 6-part blog series for a contact center vendor
- Planning a webinar and a series of articles for a new contact center client
- Guest blog posts for 2 different vendors to support upcoming campaigns
- 3 pending projects that should all get underway in September

Hey Did You Know....

… we sure live in a multi-media world, and I had a nice mix of that last month. Aside from the usual output of writing, podcasts and webinars, I was in three different things last month that are out of the norm for me.
First, a well-known vendor in the communications space is making a documentary, and I’m one of the people serving as an interview subject. My segment was filmed on location here in Toronto, and the finished product is set to come out later next month. I don’t know yet if I can share the film publicly, but will provide some sort of update for sure. If you’ve never been on a set, here’s a glimpse of what it looks like.

Next one - on Aug. 18, I hosted my first LinkedIn Live event, in conversation with Andy Purdy, CSO for Huawei USA – screen shot below. Details are here, and to watch the replay, sign into LinkedIn and then use this link.

Finally, this was from Avaya, where they asked me to comment about them winning a recent UC Award, where I served as a judge. Instead of including it in a press release, they created this short animation on Twitter. Kinda different, but it gets your attention!