Season 6 of Watch This Space kicks off 2023 with an episode titled “Our 2023 Outlook – High Hopes for AI, But We Think Analog Tech is Still Cool – Plus Future of Work Expo Preview”. As we usually do at this time of year, Chris and I provide our take on what to expect in 2023. We haven’t had this much economic uncertainty in many years, making our outlook more about survive than thrive, but also with a sense of promise for AI. For fellow analog lovers, Chris shares a treat, the NY subway “traintrackr”; and a preview for my Future of Work Expo, running Feb. 14-16 – more on that in this newsletter.

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. For a more extensive replay archive, you can access all of our podcasts here on my JAA website.

What’s Up? Part 2 – JAA Highlights 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. More detail for most of these activities can be found on my blog.

Industry conference roundup – just one event, where I was a moderator:

Internet 2.0 Conference, December 19-21, Las Vegas

Speaking events – I spoke/presented virtually three times last month:

Five9’s CX Canada Summit - on cloud migration strategies for contact centers
SCTC Fireside Chat – I’ve Been Everywhere, Man! – takeaways from my recent run of travel to various industry events
Big CX News – Episode 3 – roundtable review of recent industry news items along with other analysts – talking about RingCentral, AWS and Salesforce

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 – just one public post this month, but more will be coming for January – if you’ve ever wondered why telecom fraud is so problematic, you’ll find my post a good read
Media citings – I had 3 citations for December
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 15,958 views and 16 posts – big drop-off from recent months – not sure why – but also had half the number of posts last month compared to the last few months
My top LinkedIn post registered 2,011 views and overall, 7 posts had 900+ views
For Twitter – there were 4,062 impressions, 523 profile visits, 128 mentions, 17 tweets and 6 fewer followers – much lower than November, and these numbers have generally been trending downward most all year, and likely reflects broader trends for declining Twitter usage
My “top tweet” was during the Five9 CX Canada Summit, with 1,285 impressions

What's Coming? JAA Outlook for January

No industry events this month to kick off 2023, but two are on tap for February, and a third one possibly being added
Two upcoming podcasts/interviews in January

IR webinar – Crystal Ball for 2023 trends
Clarion Events Tech Tuesday – expert discussion – topic TBA

Future of Work Expo, Feb.14-16, 2023 – agenda published now – am full-on in speaker recruitment mode now – contact me if you think there’s a session here you/your company should be on, as well as any interest in sponsoring
In terms of active client and industry work, here are some current highlights:

Two white papers - one being finished up, and one due to launch soon
Another webinar being scheduled for a system integrator on cloud migration
Continued guest posts and podcasts coming for different vendors in the CCaaS space
Guest post coming for a vendor in the testing space
Ongoing research for a series of articles coming for a VoIP services start-up

Hey Did You Know....

2022 was my strongest year to date, and 2023 looks to be just as promising. To provide readers with a sense for how this adds up to reflect all the various things I do, below is my annual “by the numbers” tally. First for my social media metrics, trending monthly for LinkedIn and Twitter. Following that is a breakdown of the things that kept me busy during 2022.

Social Media Footprint – 2022 By the Numbers

Diverging trends between Twitter and LinkedIn compared to 2021 – Twitter impressions are now less than half what they were a year ago, while LinkedIn views are up 58%. Even before Elon Musk came into the picture, my sense is that Twitter use has been declining for some time, at least in our space, so on that basis, I’m not surprised at the drop in impressions here.

Interestingly, if you tally these two data sets – the combined gross number is almost the same as 2021. Whereas last year, my total tallies for Twitter and LinkedIn were very close (actually a tad more for Twitter), for 2022, LinkedIn is now more than 3X that of Twitter. Keep in mind that I’m equating impressions and views at face value, and that’s probably not a valid comparison. I’m not expert enough in social media to say if one is more valuable than the other, but for what drives my business, I put much more stock my LinkedIn traffic than Twitter.

Speaking of Twitter, I’m not 100% certain I’ll stay on the platform through 2023. I’m not optimistic about where Musk seems to be taking things, but I also don’t have the inclination to cut bait yet and migrate to a new platform like Mastodon, as some of my colleagues have started doing. I’ll give it a few more months, and if things go from bad to worse, I might be done with Twitter.

Thought Leadership and Business Activity – 2022 By the Numbers

7 new clients (not including new work from existing clients)
28 conferences/industry events – mostly live, 10 involved speaking and/or moderating
50 published articles/guest posts/ghost written
89 posts on my JAA blog
17 podcasts (including Watch This Space for this newsletter)
11 webinars/video segments
5 white papers/e-books
12 editions of this newsletter
35 JAA citings in the media
6 new industry accolades
1 event serving as a judge
1 SIPtones gig