"You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt"
I love Tennessee Ernie Ford's 1955 hit - the horn section and his colorful description of a coal miner's life. The amazing work ethic (to which the straw boss says "Well, a-bless my soul") has inspired mine during the pandemic.
Since March, I have recorded, spliced, edited almost 16 gigabytes of video. It's been heavy lifting - the prep, editing, propagation takes 10X each video's elapsed time - but it has kept me immensely positive. The videos have ended up in 4 series:
Acrobatics during the crisis
I have been interviewing C-level execs across industries about business acrobatics during the crisis. They have talked about heroics in healthcare, moving thousands to work from home, diversity initiatives, pivots, rapid innovation, massively scaling up or down. Has kept my spirits - and that of my audience - positive in the midst of the doom and gloom. It has also given me an amazing number of data points on changing markets to share with my advisory clients. Index here of 75 executives/practitioners interviewed so far.
The Analyst Cam
I have been excerpting videos from events, briefings, demos, presentations I have been invited to in my industry analyst role. As most of these have moved to virtual format, it has allowed to embed a shortened version with my commentary. Gives readers a bit of a "being right there" feel. These have been the largest files I have worked with. Salesforce, for example, allowed me to download 2.5 gb of video from its Industries summit last month. I excerpted about 10%. Index of those posts is here.
Burning Platform
Weekly commentary with my colleague, Brian Sommer on trends we have been seeing in enterprise world such as: Are we finally seeing a end of life for on-premise applications? How will work from home formats evolve? These are a roughly 10 minute video format - meant to be both entertaining and educational. Index here.
My interviews on other platforms
As with Tamas Hevizi, Paul Greenberg, Ton Dobbe, ASUG and many others.
On my New Florence blog, I have mined YouTube for years to embed thousands of videos. When I hear of something innovative, I write it up, embed an article and a video. I am following a similar format on Deal Architect. I take notes as I am editing the video and use that for my commentary. Lots of my readers still prefer written words.
My videos have been recorded across Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, ON24, BlueJeans, StreamYard, Skype, Wonder and other platforms, but they all end up on the Deal Architect channel on YouTube.
And I have a feeling the volume is about to grow even larger. I just got an iPhone 12 Pro. Cannot wait to try out its amazing camera. Have talked to some clients about using a GoPro to record processes at their shop floors and other physical sites. On my Christmas wish list is a drone. Lots of confidential, NDA stuff and blips and bloopers will be left out but there should be plenty of share. It feels good to give back to YouTube.
To twist Tennessee's lyrics
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the YouTube store
Burning Platform: Diversity Trends in Tech
Brian Sommer and I have recorded 12 episodes in this series - see index here. Last couple of weeks, we have had several guests like Rob Kugel of Ventana, Josh Greenbaum of EA Consulting, Bonnie Tinder of Raven Intel, Frank Scavo of Avasant and Dennis Howlett of Diginomica.
The BLM movement this summer has brought more urgency for HR and procurement groups to diversify employee and supplier bases. Related to this, I did interviews with two prominent African-American tech executives, Tony Prophet, Chief Equality Officer at Salesforce and Charles Phillips, Chairman at Infor. Also a presentation by Barbry McGann of Workday on their new VIBE product which allows companies to better visualize employee diversity from multiple dimensions. The Tech sector should be proud of its efforts.
While the recent intense focus is nice to see, it would be remiss to not point out we have been making steady progress for a long time. I invited Cindy Jutras, President of Mint Jutras to talk about her 45-year career at software vendors and analyst firms, and draw from her experiences on how gender and ethnic-based diversity have evolved in the industry. I add my own experience as an immigrant and someone who has worked in and traveled to 70 countries and seen the US "from the outside in" in the video below.
I particularly liked Cindy pointing out the movie, "Hidden Figures" about a team of female African-American mathematicians who served a critical role in NASA during the early years of the U.S. space program. As she says "we have come so far"
We also touch on age discrimination. Silicon Valley and outsourcers tend to be focused on young recruits, but even corporate IT tends to be ambivalent about older employees. The pandemic has resulted in many older employees who are traumatized or those who finally having spent more time at home with families and have relished the experience. Both categories are opting for early retirements. These accelerated (and unplanned) exits may also bring more of a focus on the age attribute as companies refine their diversity policies.
It is a not a "woke" conversation. It is a realistic discussion about why a system of meritocracy, more enlightened executives and driven individuals work better than forced mandates for diversity.
December 17, 2020 in Burning Platform, Diversity Inclusion, Industry Commentary | Permalink | Comments (0)