Season 5 of Watch This Space continues with an episode titled “The Technology of Trust – Digital Identity, Communications and the Future of Work”. Jon and Chris examine the relationship between personal identity and communications in today’s digital world, which lacks the security safeguards natively built into analog technologies. We discuss the challenges to keep technology innovation such as Web3 moving forward where trust is compromised, even for everyday communications. New narratives will be needed, and the concepts of synthetic media and media provenance were introduced as examples of what this new landscape will look like.
For those of you who don’t subscribe to our podcast directly from a commercial platform, you can access it any time here on my website, or on the 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 – namely iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, and Stitcher.

What’s Up? Part 2 – JAA Highlights from February

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.
Conference roundup – absolutely nothing for me in February - and I’m not complaining – starting this month, I have a mix of in-person and virtual events on the calendar through June, and am looking forward to getting back to live events – finally!
Webinar – with Vonage, Feb. 10 – Decode the CPaaS Opportunity – accompanying white paper coming soon
New kudo – this is my fifth industry accolade so far in 2022, coming from Channel Futures, where I was named a top 50 “channel influencer”
Writing roundup – just one public post with a byline this month, on TechTarget – Reassess Enterprise UCaaS Deployments in a Hybrid Workplace
Media citings – was quiet, with just 1 citing
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 February:
- For LinkedIn – I had 11,333 views and 17 posts – very similar to January
- My top LinkedIn post registered 1,483 views and overall, 8 posts had 500+ views
- For Twitter – there were 6,172 impressions, 1,306 profile visits, 25 mentions, 14 tweets, and 21 new followers – stats are way down from January, largely due to having no events to tweet about, but that will change in March for sure
- My “top tweet” was about 8x8’s earnings results, with 830 impressions, and overall, 4 tweets had 300+ impressions
Updates were recently added about my musical interests, with both new video clips and photos, including our latest gig in November at the SCTC conference. For those who don’t know about my fun side – we all need that! - you can find this on the My Music tab.

What's Coming? JAA Outlook for March

In terms of this month’s event activity, the biggest industry event in our space is finally back in-person – Enterprise Connect, where I’ll be speaking – along with two virtual vendor events for analysts:
- Mitel NEXT, March 9
- 8x8 Industry Analyst Event, March 16-17
- Enterprise Connect 2022, March 21-24, Orlando, FL
Speaking of upcoming events, my speaker recruitment efforts continue for Future of Work Expo, running June 21-23 - I’m returning as Chair, and here’s the agenda page – please get in touch to learn more, either for speaking or sponsoring/exhibiting
Speaking of speaking at events, I’ll be giving my 5th state of the market update for AI and speech tech in the enterprise at Enterprise Connect – am speaking at 8am on Monday, March 21 – details are here, and you can save $400 on registration using promo code Arnold22
In terms of current client work, here’s what I can share:
- New white paper and e-book for a Tier 1 collaboration vendor – both should publish this month
- Starting a series of thought leadership pieces for a leading contact center vendor
- Continued blog posts ghost-written for a contact center vendor
- Book review to be published in early March for a new book co-written by the CEO for a Tier 1 vendor
- Signed off a 2022 agreement for series of thought leadership initiatives with a Tier 1 global tech vendor

Hey Did You Know....

… that robots can strut, preen and dance just like the Rolling Stones?

They sure can, thanks to the super-cool work Boston Dynamics is doing with AI and other technologies. But the bigger question is… can they sing like the Rolling Stones? This may seem like an odd question, but it’s what I do, and I’ll have more to say about it during my Enterprise Connect talk. So, if you’re still on the fence about coming to the event in Orlando later this month, this just might start you up.

Season 4 of Watch This Space continues with an episode titled “Microsoft 2021 Work Trend Index Report – Hybrid Work: It’s Complicated”. This brand-new report had some timely data and implications around a hot trend these days – hybrid work. There’s a growing consensus this will be the way forward as we come out of the pandemic, but it brings challenges that are distinct from work from home, as well as working in the office. We’ve got it covered, and for more, you can read my latest No Jitter article, featured later in this issue.
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 – More Highlights and Insights from March

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 – I tracked four events last month:
  - March 2-4 – Microsoft Ignite
  - March 4 – Vonage Analyst Day
  - March 16 – Fuze Analyst Update
  - March 30-31 – Cisco Live
- Podcasts – aside from this month’s Watch This Space episode, I was part of two BCStrategies podcasts in March – see my blog posts for links:
  - March 9 – What Was Supposed to be Here by Now
  - March 18 - Impressions from Microsoft Ignite
- Webinars – I had three last month, and links can be found in my blog posts:
  - March 4 – webinar presentation with Mitel
  - March 10 – webinar presentation with Huawei
  - March 18 – webinar presentation with RingCentral
- March writing spotlight – my latest BCStrategies post: Microsoft Ignite: Their Vision for a Post-PC World and Teams Highlights – if you don’t know what mixed reality is and how the physical and virtual worlds are starting to blur, this is a good read – and here are a few of my visuals to pique your curiosity:

Here’s my Writing Roundup post for March – it’s a monthly digest of my thought leadership across various channels, including TechTarget, No Jitter and BCStrategies

Media citings – had two of these for March
Other March notables – see Hey, Did You Know? below for details:
- Named a UC influencer in Onalytica’s Who’s Who in Telecoms?
- Named to the UCX Advisory Council
- Returning again as a judge for Oracle’s Startup Idol 4 in May
- Returning as Chair of the Future of Work event during ITExpo in June
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 March:
- For LinkedIn – I had 14,623 views and 22 posts – about the same as last month.
- My top LinkedIn post registered 1,217 views and overall, 9 posts had 800+ views.
- For Twitter – there were 18,200 impressions, 1,101 profile visits, 66 mentions, 33 tweets, and 16 new followers – all these stats were up from February.
- My “top tweet” was for my No Jitter post about hybrid work, with 1,543 impressions. Overall, 12 tweets had 500+ 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 April

Just finished a very strong quarter, with plenty to keep me busy this month and beyond:
- Strangely, no virtual events for April – so far
- Webinar – presenting on UCaaS, sponsored by Lumen, April date TBD
- Working on two new white papers, will be starting a go-to-market strategy project with a contact center vendor, and other new opportunities are in play
- PulverREDU – Chris Fine and I are offering a one-hour education session on the changing role of voice for Jeff Pulver’s new online learning platform - coming in May

Hey Did You Know?

March sure was a busy month, and aside from my writing, speaking and client work, there were several other good things happening, and thought it best to summarize them here: