One of the things we tried to do to influence analyst relations is to add new tools.  Now I readily admit that video is not a new tool, but using it is another bullet in the gun, so a tool that is expanding in our A/R arsenal at events.

Special thanks to Cote of RedMonk who did all the work here.  At the bottom is his interview of me, so have at it, I can take a joke.

Jamie Thomas on RSDC

Grady Booch on Multi Core UML

Scott Hebner on Rational Team Concert, SaaS and Jazz thinking

Laura Bennett on alphaWorks and developerWorks

Telelogic

Ashok Reddy on Rational jazz

Mike Orourke on Rational Team Concert

Dave Klavon on Testing

John Simonds, yes yours truly on Blogs, Tags, and Twitter in Analyst Relations

Recently, I’ve updated my sidebar with a few decorations. Why, something to do I suppose.

You will now see my recent twitter tweets, support for Denmark against terrorists, a donation button to paypal (gratuitous in the first degree.

Today I added the OR code for my blog which you can see. To get your own secret decoder OR code, go to the code generator site.

Maybe.

I had a conversation recently with one of the major firms recently who asked me why I did what I do on my blog. Being transparent, I told them my motives, my objectives and my expectations. Let me stop and say that I fully expect them to be reading this post. I’ve been asked to present blogging as a best practice for analyst relations to a group of my peers. I do believe that it is a best practice as I accomplish many things through blogging (I’ll concede that competitive eating is pretty much motive-less, except for the spectacle of it). Mostly I was taken back that anyone would care a hoot about what I write, but I seemed to have mis-judged the audience. I know why I do what I do, but it seems that others are interested and the firm I spoke to thinks it could help the greater A/R community.

Blogging should be about transparency, but as I’ve noted before, I hate to lose. I clearly use my blog to speak to analysts as I learned well that the R in A/R doesn’t stand for reports. Yes, I write that often, so that phrase is brought to you by the department of redundancy department, but I digress. Back to hating to lose, I find that blogging gives me an additional line of communications with analysts, which I’d need to disclose to all, and it gives me a one up on the competition. I even have relationships with analysts through the blog that I don’t work day to day with.

It became clear in the conversation that I’m not going to worry about it that much as the discussion quickly came to the point that blogging is passion, you either are going to do it or your not. Most that do it are like the people at the gym after New Years. Here today, back at the buffet line tomorrow.

It also became clear to me who I felt were better bloggers than I, which I would point out in such a presentation, should I get asked to actually do it. But a lot comes down to whether I would discuss it or would I hold the keys to the safe of A/R tactics.

Maybe I just have delusions of adequacy?

My guess, I’d probably do it if asked to as if we can make our profession better, why not? And to answer the question is a blog influential to analyst relations, for me the answer is definitively yes…..both reading and writing.

I read recently via ARmadgeddon that Forrester is conducting a review of which blog do you read for Analyst Relations. To my surprise, Delusions of Adequacy was on the list. I’ve never tried to consciously do the tricks that score you high on the reader list. To the contrary, I violate many of the rules of top bloggers, especially staying on subject. While I do cover quite a bit about the profession, I also throw in humor (click on the category to see for yourself) and other issues a lot of people other than the A/R crowd care about.

In the blog stats, I get a lot of hits on the Day Lilly named after my Mother and Competitive Eating of all things.

Anyway, here is the list of A/R blogs to read. Good for those other guys, maybe one day we’ll actually be A/R professionals if we keep reading and writing.

• Analyst Insight by David Rossiter (UK)
• Analyst Equity by Duncan Chapple (UK)
• ARcade by Hill & Knowlton (US)
• AR Insider newsletter by Knowledge Capital Group (US)
• ARmadgeddon (US)
• Outsell Now (US)
• Tekrati.com The Industry Analyst Reporter (and companion blog) (US)
• Delusions of Adequacy by John Simonds (US)
• Infuse by Duncan Brown (UK)

OK, it found me.  I wrote recently about some A/R links and it was found by a communications colleague in Israel who says A/R is her favorite.  So I’m welcoming Nancy Shapira-Aronovic and Positioning Power to Delusions of Adequacy.

I’ve been on a hosted blog for about a year now and have had nothing but problems. While I use Wordpress as an interface and love it, the publishing capabilites are lame.

It’s taken away the API key for posting YouTube. The Atom and RSS feeds are inconsistent at best. Many other problems are making it just not worth it.

So I’m going to double post both here and at Deladequacy.wordpress.com for a while, eventually winding up there I believe. I’ll keep JohnSimonds.com as I own it now, but 1 and 1 just isn’t worth it, nor is hosting my own that worth it maintenance wise.

I had originally changed my theme to one with widgets, which was nice but too buggy. I learned this and that some folks still actually use IE still, which is where the problem was. Seems it works on every other browser but IE.

So I’m back to the basic format for now until I have the time to find a theme that is functional.

So, boring but it works.Another reason why I am trying to get Microsoft out of my life. This time, a buggy browser….

Update: A vista design/security flaw is discovered, I’m shocked

I, like Steve O’Grady am going to be trying out new themes for my blog until I settle on one that works.  If you get this in an RSS feed, you won’t care, but this one supports widgets and is better organized in the link section.

The best part about this was learning, which involved Steve teaching me how to navigate through a number of issues that I’ve been wanting to learn.  So many thanks Steve…couldn’t have managed it without you.

I guess they chiseled press releases on stone at some point to promote the invention of fire. Later, parchment must have been sent out to document the parting of the Red Sea.

But the industrial revolution gave us good tools like the printing press and the typewriter, fax machines and let’s not forget the copy machine from the Xrocks corporation which allowed us to mail press releases an astonishing 2 weeks prior to the announcement, embargoed of course.

Then came email, the internet, instant messaging…I’m not going out on a big limb here history wise. Now with the push of a button, bingo - news everywhere.

So what’s the point here? I like to see trends and be an early adopter where possible. There have been times I wait for the technology to stabilize before I expose my backside to any corporate or public lashings, but for the most part, I like to be or know about what the next advantage possible to be gained. I remember using MCI Mail in the mid ’80’s to beat the big companies to the story (then my competition was, gasp - IBM). I was talking to Bill Howard, Bill Machrone and John Dvorak of PC Magazine when it seemed like there were about 25 email users total in the business world.

Despite my daughter’s ability to overwhelm me in Instant Messaging volume, I did use it as a communications tool to reach analysts in the ’90’s before others caught on.

I’ve been beaten to the punch more times than not on new trends, but I give credit to those that catch on before me and I try to learn to do things in a newer better way. Social Computing is such a trend that offers the next new world to those who have vision.

I originally called this the change/death/other titles here of PR, but that will never die, only morph. Those that adopt the new media approach which is happening now, which includes but is not limited to (good lawyer speak there) blogging, podcasting, videocasting, wiki and the various other components of Social Computing will beat others to the punch. (I was later to this game than I wanted to be, but still ahead of many I’m finding out as I beat my head against the wall here sometimes.)

While there was no moment of truth type revelation about why this is, I’ll give Charline Li the credit to why big companies are not always the leaders on this, it requires giving up control. Now tie this into the above stated PR change issue, as control is vital to shaping the message or dealing with the other large major media outlets. The quicker more nimble folks who already embrace Social Computing are moving ahead and larger companies are trying to figure it out and sometimes try to control it. I will say that IBM is conducting perhaps the largest social computing exercise ever right now, but the control issue prevents any details here until it is complete. I hope to blog about it soon, and I hope to start an analyst relations practice/position about Social Computing, send your positive references in now about me as I’ll be canvasing soon for a new frontier that I think we need here.

This is not just a company/industry or PR issue either. Smaller and more nimble analyst firms are leading the way and are way ahead of 800 pound gorillas here.

So I know people who were naysayers to email, IM and other trends and look what happened there. Social Computing will change the messaging capabilities, the way we will work and exchange information and that train is leaving the station, be on it or miss the chance.

I finally made the trek from Blogger to a hosted blog, from where I’ll be posting from now on.

I learned many things along the way, like I should keep my day job as I’m not going to make it as a web designer. I also learned that it is good to have friends that know what they are doing, like SSteve O’Grady who helped me get this done (read, did all the real work to get it to the hosted account). I also learned different Blog programs which was good for me.

I wonder if I lost readers, or through the promotion process of letting people know that I’m in a different place, I’ll get some pick up. I never was overly concerned about competing with Scoble or Instapundit anyway.

Learning is good. Now back to blogging. The good news is I have Not all Geeks are Wimps Part II ready to go and a bloggerview with Grady Booch just around the corner.