Jon Reed, Co-founder, diginomica

Jon may not be a philosopher, but as a writer, analyst, and podcaster, he certainly has the trust of the B2B community. Jon joins Pressing Matters to tell us about his mission to disrupt B2B tech media and analysis, his thoughts on the high percentage of AI hype versus reality, and how he's managed to live in Massachusetts for more than 30 years without picking up an accent.

Welcome to Pressing Matters from Big Valley Marketing, the podcast that brings you conversations with the top media and influencers in B2B tech. I'm Dave Reddy, Head of Big Valley Marketing's Media & Influencers practice, and I'm your host. Through research and good old-fashioned relationship building, we've identified B2B tech's top 200 media and influencers, including Jon Reed.

Here's our chat with Jon. Enjoy.

Transcript

Dave Reddy: 0:00

Jon Reed's parents and grandparents all had PhDs in philosophy. Imagine their Thanksgiving dinners. At any rate, while Jon admitted he didn't have the desire to follow directly in their footsteps, he is an inquisitive man. So naturally, he made a living asking a lot of questions about B2B tech. First at several smaller newsletters he founded, and since 2013 at the site he co-founded, diginomica. Jon may not be a philosopher, but as a writer, analyst, and podcaster, he certainly has the trust of the B2B community. Jon joined us to tell us about his mission to disrupt B2B tech media and analysis, his thoughts on the high percentage of AI hype versus reality, and how he's managed to live in Massachusetts for more than 30 years or "yeahs," as we say back home, without picking up that accent, for this episode of Pressing Matters from Big Valley Marketing, the podcast that brings you conversations with the top media and influencers in B2B tech. I'm Dave Reddy, head of Big Valley Marketing's Media & Influencers practice, and I'm your host. Through research and good old-fashioned relationship building, we've identified B2B tech's top 200 media and influencers, including Jon. Here's our chat with Jon. Enjoy. Jon, thanks so much for joining the podcast. It's a great pleasure to have you on.

Speaker: 1:29

We've had this booked for a while, and I've been waiting to see what bag of tricks you have. And and you made me do some homework, which was cool just because I know you like to ask people about their history a little bit. So you made me think about my history and how I got here. So that should be fun.

Dave Reddy: 1:43

Well, let's start with that. So you grew up in Oklahoma. Tell me about that, and you know, what did mom and dad do and which town?

Speaker: 1:51

Yeah, I grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was a pretty good place to grow up. And uh I think I think I always knew deep down I was gonna leave Oklahoma, and I had in mind some heroic famous life. But I think at the heart, and I learned a lot about like that things don't go exactly as you envisioned, but but the one thing that I think was true to heart there was that I was meant for many adventures that were gonna take me far away from what I once thought of as home, and that that was gonna be a journey I would go on, and that's kind of what happened. And so, you know, I I came east for college and I'm still based in Massachusetts. We may talk about that more later, but anyway, grew up with my mother who is a PhD in philosophy, and as does my father and my mother's grandparents, so a lot of PhDs in my family in philosophy, and that was really interesting too. And so I had to kind of think about that, and I never, you know, I I never went past college, so I think I always knew I wasn't going to be an academic, but I really did like this sort of philosophical outlook on life, and so I've always liked to ask questions, but I always felt like philosophy is at its best when it can help people with real-world problems. So in my books and in my writing, I like to try to do that, but I suppose in a weird way that is my family's legacy, is is that so hold on a second.

Dave Reddy: 3:13

Mom and dad were PhDs, and your grandparents were PhDs, and were they all PhDs in philosophy?

Speaker: 3:19

Yeah.

Dave Reddy: 3:20

Okay, so what was dinner like? Let's talk about.

Speaker: 3:25

Oh my gosh. Well, you know, I mean, it was just, you know, people liked talking about ideas, you know, and books and all of that. And, you know, it took me a long time to kind of realize like that I needed to find my own way and all of that. You know, I wasn't gonna follow the the family pattern. But um, you know, these these were people that just, you know, yeah, they they taught, they liked a lot of esoteric subjects, but you know, political, whatever. I mean, you know, interesting, you know, dinner discussions were kind of you know intellectual at times.

Dave Reddy: 4:00

I would imagine. I can, you know, how how many times did you talk about the cave or the um the the the trolley car? Socrates say, right? I love it. We had some interesting chats at my table, but uh philosophy was definitely not on the on the list. So you you you came east to Hampshire College, for those who don't know, it is in the wonderful college town of Amherst, Massachusetts, which includes UMass - Amherst, Hampshire, obviously, and Smith among us.

Speaker: 4:32

Yeah, Mount Holyoke, five colleges.

Dave Reddy: 4:34

Yeah, right.

Speaker: 4:35

Yep.

Dave Reddy: 4:35

Pretty little town, and not totally in the middle of nowhere, but pretty much a college town. And you pursued pre-law, so is that the original notion? You're gonna be a lawyer, and I I'm guessing since you don't have a law degree, that that didn't end up happening.

Speaker: 4:49

Yeah, I was really interested in the law when I was in college and I did a major research paper along those lines. It was on U.S. American Indian legal relations, actually, but but anyway, I was really interested in that, but but I was also I had been a writer for a long time, and even in high school, I was jotting poems and frenzied ideas on manuscripts and stuff. And so eventually I just realized I had a crossroads between the two. And to some to summarize it briefly, it was like a crucial path in my road, in my road of my life between pursuing credentials versus what I call creating your own credentials, which is a different path. And that's the path I chose, you know, and that's the path of just creating stuff all the time. And I think I realized I had to make a choice, you know, and so there were two parts of my personality, and I'd like to think that I've retained a little bit of my legal, logistic, logical thinking stuff, analytical stuff. But I ultimately, you know, voted on my creative side, and uh man, it's been quite a quite a choice. I mean, you know, it's a different kind of life for sure. And you know, I don't know whether you could say one's better than the other, but you you ultimately hope that you find the one that suits you the best, you know.

Dave Reddy: 6:00

And it's not a massive leap from philosophy to, to your point, asking questions and being creative and writing about things. What is a leap is uh you you focus so much of your your career on on ERP, enterprise resource planning, which I'm I'm sure all of my listeners know because we're B2B tech pros. How did you end up focusing on that? Now, was that the first job out of college? You you went to a recruiting job, I believe, and you ended up of recruiting people for ERP jobs, if I'm correct. Or was that just sort of a happy accident that you ended up in the ERP space?

Speaker: 6:34

Good question. So actually, my my first major job out of college, I did a lot of stuff after college, including bagging groceries, which was a good hard lesson in what I needed to face if I wanted to get outside of that world. Um but anyway, I eventually got a job as a founding editor of a local arts entertainment publication, and that's where I really got my writing chops underway commercially, but then also learned a lot about running startup businesses as a result of that. And and that's kind of what taught me that I wanted to be more than a freelance writer. I wanted to build things, and and then, you know, ultimately I got into recruiting because I had the opportunity to - I really wanted to learn more about sales, to be honest with you, but but also I was just drawn to this recruiting firm because they were kind of interested in content. They did a lot of newsletters and stuff, and then it, you know, and a really early theme in my career was not so much inspiration as desperation, which was like, I found myself like going to recruiting shows and realizing that there's a lot of people that are just naturals at at sales, and they can walk into a room and and meet 50 people and like introduce themselves, and I was never gonna be that guy. And so I was like, I realized like I got to bring my own talents into the equation here, or I'm not gonna be able to compete. And so I was, that's when I kind of envisioned developing email newsletters around topics that I found interesting, and then eventually that became web communities, but that was really desperation more than anything else, because I couldn't compete in other ways, and so that was what it was about. And ERP just drew me in because I thought it was a really interesting way of understanding like the change, I guess, in corporate settings. And so while I, while I've always studied ERP a lot, over the years I really transitioned more into what I consider my true focus, which is on real-world transformation in enterprise settings. And ERP has become, I guess, a smaller part of that overall focus, but it's still been something I I look at carefully. But um, but yeah, that was kind of what happened, and so I ended up running an ERP recruiting firm for for five years, and that was you know sort of how I first got my start in all of that.

Dave Reddy: 8:44

Now, don't take this question the wrong way because we love ERP here at Big Valley Marketing. In fact, one of our clients is a big ERP player, but why ERP? I mean, there's so many people like when I talk to a lot of reporters, they're like, 'You're pitching me ERP.' So what was it that really said to you, this is what I want to do?

Speaker: 9:02

Well, you know, at the time it was really simple, which was that the the SAP resume, resumes crossing my desk in in in 1995 were going out the door at a very rapid rate. There was, there was a couple that said we're gonna bill $250 an hour and we only work on projects together. Can you imagine saying that today about anything? We only work on projects together, and this is our rate, take it or leave it, and they got hired the next day. Yep, and I was like, and I was like, I got I gotta pay attention to this. But actually, what ended up happening is I studied ERP software, SAP Oracle, et cetera, what I realized is the attempt to integrate processes across businesses was a really, really noble goal. And now you could argue that the software at the time really wasn't totally equipped to do that. Fair enough. And and in fact, it was 1997, I think, when I started my extending the enterprise newsletter because I really felt like ERP needed to connect to all this other stuff outside the enterprise, customers, all of that. I was way ahead of my time because the technology definitely wasn't ready to support that. But I always kind of felt like it all had to connect. But that's why I was drawn to it is that ERP was the beginning of trying to connect things and help you to understand how a business needs to really work together to achieve a really good result. And but it's not just ERP, but ERP was a way of getting into that conversation, you know.

Dave Reddy: 10:25

And from a business perspective, you just alluded to this. You know, this is the late 90s, early 2000s. The internet is still relatively new. Yeah. And some of the so were these email newsletters? Were they print newsletters? Were they was it online content?

Speaker: 10:40

I think it was a combo - started with email for about six months, and then we built one of the first websites in our industry around 1996.

Dave Reddy: 10:46

And uh yeah, so you're way ahead of the curve there. I mean, obviously everybody now is.

Speaker: 10:52

Like I said, it was more it was more desperation than inspiration because I was like, we can publish online, let's do this. Right. And you know, but what I became really fascinated by pretty quickly, Dave, and I and I'm fascinated to this to this day, is how my content when I did a really good job on it, which was like, you know, sharing openly like issues, topics. I didn't know what I was talking about at first, okay. Let's admit that. But uh, but I embraced that learning curve. And like when I really shared good stuff that helped people, it it was like they got to know me and it even though they didn't know me. And it was this sort of virtual intimacy that got created through that, that built relationships beyond what I could do one-on-one. And then you would meet people at a show and they would greet you like like you were an old friend, right? And that was so cool. And and and and that dynamic around community really fascinated me. And and you know, by the way, I worry a little bit about the future of that today, but but that was the old web, and that was in my mind a really good web in a lot of ways. And and to this day it happens, right? Because you and I kind of got to know each other through the content that we've created. Absolutely. And and it and and it and it's not like we're talking for the first time, but it doesn't really feel like that. And I think that we resist talking about magic too much when it comes to technology, but I think that's kind of magical.

Dave Reddy: 12:17

Yeah, I mean, and that's you know, if I may, that's the purpose of the show. I want people to get to know you, and I want to get to know you too better, so why why not do both? To that end, you know, you getting to that magic back then. I'm just curious how difficult that was. I'm reminded of a job interview I had right around the same time you were doing this. So 96, 97 for a sports publication, it was a print. And the last question I asked was, 'Are you gonna do an internet version?' And the guy looked at me like I was crazy and he's like, 'People spend too much damn time on a computer. I'm never gonna do that.' I won't tell you what the publication is, but they they were soon doing an internet version, and I did not take the job. Did you run into any of that? I mean, you had to, right? In 96, like, what do you mean we're gonna do it online? You print it, you send it to people, you know, what are you talking about?

Speaker: 13:06

Did run into that, but one of the things that I picked up on that I became really addicted to in my career was working with small lean organizations that that didn't have to cut through all that red tape necessarily, but we could just publish. And I've been infatuated by my ability to just write something and hit the publish button and send it out without too many intermediaries. Now, I will say that sometimes having a good editor read your stuff is great. But in general, like like you point out in larger organizations, they can move slowly in those matters, and a lot of publishers, for example, did move slowly. But I love the fact that we didn't have those barriers. We were just like, hey, you know, wouldn't it be better if we got emails and interactions online instead of like checking the fax machine? Because when I first started, we were checking fax machines for resumes and stuff. And we, and like you said, we were print, we were we were mailing newsletters out, and it was like, 'oh my god.'

Dave Reddy: 14:03

One of my early jobs at the Mercury News, when I was, this was 30 some years ago, and some of the stuff eventually started coming in online. But we we did a uh a weekly calendar of like, you know, softball tournaments and frisbee tournaments and biking and all sorts of other things that you could go, you know, called the venture calendar. I had to type that damn fax after fax after email after letter after fax. And you know, again, it was a job I learned a whole lot in that newsroom, but it's hard to believe that that we bothered to even do that. I spent all that time speaking of automation, AI, and things that we're gonna get into later, I spent all that time just manually typing in a hundred little blurbs.

Speaker: 14:52

So one thing I think back to in my life that you kind of provoked in me is like there's a series of moments that are really crucial when you look back, and one of those for me was in or around 2008, I think. I'm not sure of the exact year, but right around then. And I received a sample Forrester report called The Prudent Approach to SAP R3 by a guy named Bobby Cameron, who I believe is still working at Forrester, if he hasn't quite retired. I met him actually for the first time a number of a few years ago. But anyway, that report really blew my mind because it was so it was strongly worded, authoritative, and it provided this sense of context. And this was the thing that I picked up on. I talked to you about my desperation. This might have been my inspiration or insight of that time, which is there's too much noise. We need context, we need to understand why these things happen in our industry because stuff moves so fast. And and that's in the 90s. Think about how fast stuff moves now. But even then, I thought that was gold. And it was a it was mailed to me, so it was like, you know, that was the I talked talk to my boss and getting a subscription every month. I'd be like, oh my God, I gotta read this next report. And um, and and it took me quite a while in my career before I got anywhere near the ability to provide the kind of context that I got from that report. But that was my challenge to myself was I want to deliver context. I mean, news, yes, but place it in a context that people can understand what this means to me. And that I'm really glad I embraced that because I feel like more and more with every day, that's what we need is context from people that we trust, and not from just one person, obviously, but if you have those trusted sources that provide you with that framework to understand what's happening, I just I s that was at the core of my aspirations from that point forward.

Dave Reddy: 16:54

Let let's uh let's dig into that a little bit because you you've started a lot of media sites. Uh you mentioned the arts and entertainment one that I hadn't hadn't heard about, ERP tips, john.erp, and eventually this comes into Dignomica in about I think 2013. How much of DigiNomica's DNA is in your earlier site, in the the earlier websites, or even in that Forester piece that you got, the notion that you wanted to do something completely different?

Speaker: 17:22

Well, Diginomica was a real advancement. I think the I I would say there's one other there was one other notable advancement that came before Diginomica, which was around 2007. I had been infatuated with the with the with the podcast medium. And at that time I launched a website, johnnyerp.com, that was a lot ERP focused, but it was really a web 2.0 site for me. And it was about like I would record podcasts on like a speaker phone into a Zoom recorder. And but I just love that format. I just really like the idea of informal conversations, people just talking about what matters to them, but in our industry. And um, to this day, it's still one of my favorite formats, which is why do conversations like this, because I just I just think that's how you get to the heart of things, and it was so much fun to do that, and that really set a tone for like multimedia experiments for me, which has been a really important thing. But the bigger thing that happened right around that time is I ran into a bunch of independent analysts of various flavors, and what I realized is that they were so outspoken in doing their own business models in this industry, and I realized like I was making a bit of a mistake in my career because I was still being a little too conventional with my approach, and I realized like there's room in our industry for unconventional approaches and independent voices, and I wanted to be one of those, and it was kind of mind-blowing for me because I was kind of trying to be more this is my day job, and then I have my books and other writing products on the side, and I realized, why am I doing that? I need to like put everything I have of me into all my work and have that passion resonate through it. And there were people I could name throw out some of their names. People, some of them are still in this industry. Den Hallett retired, he was a great example. Vinny Merchantani still does his thing, Frank Scavo. These folks, Frank kind of retired, but he's still writing. These folks, Brian Summer, who's become a close colleague of mine, we do a lot of video stuff together, but and we do our own predictions every year that make fun of tech predictions, which are coming out like tomorrow. But anyway, like like these people became my role models because I was like, they're doing it their way, and they're making a difference to customers because they're speaking openly about what matters without fear. And I was like, I want to be one of those people. And and so that really inspired me. But then around the time of Diginomica, which was much later, that was 2013. I think I think the five of us that started that, we realized that that that sort of independent thing was great, but it was time to join forces and and try to build something together. And I think that was so important because now today it's harder and harder to just be your own independent solo thing because there is so much noise now that it's so hard to build your own brand just being on your own, especially in B2B, where just being a cool Instagram celebrity doesn't do it for people. So it's hard to break through. And so so I'm really glad that we did that because I would have struggled I think to do all of that on my own. But the thing that we really did at Diginomica is we had a really clear vision that tech media needed to be disrupted. And that came from this feeling that tech media sites were just becoming this infested with advertisements and autoplay videos and it just felt like a race to the bottom. And we wanted to create like a clean user experience focused on the enterprise and the whole thing was like it's not just about page views it's about what really matters and and and if I if I write about a a Netsuite show and I get one tenth of the audience or one twentieth of the audience of an iPhone gadget review well I'm actually reaching some really important people in that audience. This is like a niche that controls budgets and makes decisions for companies and you know green lights projects and stuff. And shouldn't we be able to build a business off of that? And but most tech media sites were all about page views and so they were like oh a page view to a NetSuite art it's it's just the same as a as a page view for an iPhone gadget review. So let's just go for the gadget reviews and we were like the hell with that like we if we can prove that we can reach the right people we can do an enterprise focused site. And so that was what our business model was built on and that's how we've subsisted all these years later whatever I think we're like in 13 almost 13 years from there.

Dave Reddy: 21:49

And there are still some good B2B tech sites out there but your point unfortunately remains true. A lot of the influences reporters I talk to will tell me off the record of course it's like I would love to cover that small really interesting client you just talked to me about but I can only cover Fortune 500 or Fortune 100 companies. And and then of course we've got the monetization issue which is which is which sort of leads to that which is how are you going to make money these days when you're not selling tire ads.

Speaker: 22:18

And I would also challenge you a little bit in the sense that most of those I don't want to throw any names under the bus but most of those B2B tech sites if you go on them autoplay videos massive subscription pop-ups interrupting everything on the site just a really cluttered crappy reader experience and and you know we're striving for something very different. And I would argue there's very very few sites out there that are able to do that. I will throw a shout out to the new stack because I think on the they're they're more of a technical version of what we do. We're more business focused but I think they also do a terrific job with this reader experience thing. But anyway there's not that many sites that have the business model that allow them to do it that way.

Dave Reddy: 23:01

You also said and and I and I don't know how much this was the advertising but you you you write on your LinkedIn that you write for quote the BS weary reader. Now it it it beyond the dealing with the the ads and so forth what what what are you speaking to exactly I've got an idea but I want to hear from you what are you speaking to exactly there when you're talking to the BS you see on some of these some of these sites?

Speaker: 23:25

Well right I mean just because like there's so much sort of inherent knee-jerk techno optimism and this feeling that that the you know with AI is a great example because there's this feeling of inevitability that everything you sprinkle with AI is going to have a good result and every everyone is AI first and it's all wonderful. Well my ultimate goal always is to help a reader have a more successful project and they need to understand the real pros and cons of everything and they can't subsist on a diet of propaganda and and get a result. And so that's not to say that there aren't some real strengths of some of these technologies but but people can tell when they're when they're being BSed and and and and they just get exhausted by it. I mean we we have people asking us about these unpredictions when are they coming out when are they coming out and the reason is because everyone is just overwhelmed this time of year by these completely vapid predictions of what's going to come next year and the reality is we don't really know. It's really hard to predict global volatility and and we should be humble about that. But also like like we need to peel back what really works and what doesn't in a more unflinching way if we're actually going to help people succeed. But John, next year is going to be the year of AI. Right. I I get in this stuff and when Brian I revealing these predictions other people were sending us and it was things like next year will be the year of AI results. You know you think you know like and then and this other one around next year will be the year that agents you know talk to each are going to talk to each other and it was about A2A and stuff and actually we have a prediction making fun of that because I spent a lot of time under the hood and agents aren't ready to talk to each other yet and there's some very specific technical reasons why it's very very difficult for agents from different vendors to talk to each other right now. And it has to do with the fact that context from different agents is not easily portable across platforms and vendors. So no it's not going to be easy to solve that problem and and and people deserve to understand that not just be told that oh next year all your agents are going to be able to talk to each other. I think the um prediction I made up about that is how three agents from different vendors get together and they're trying to solve an e-commerce problem but they end up writing a script for Armageddon 2 instead. So but but that's our way of kind of poking fun at the fact that some of this shit's not real yet but you know what some of it is and what customers really need to understand is what's real and what's not today.

Dave Reddy: 26:05

I think you may have just answered this question but uh based on our where we're going with the conversation I wanted to jump ahead you you you wrote also on your on your LinkedIn that you are quickly earning a reputation for your outspoken views which some of which you just shared and research on the pros and cons of agenic AI in the enterprise share another because that was a great rant so what's your second rant about oh man I can give I can give you I can give you a lot of them I mean look I mean I I'm trying to approach this in a different way because I am taking agentic AI and AI in general very very seriously though there's many many flavors of AI.

Speaker: 26:40

One of the reasons I think I can be outspoken about it is that I I might even make the argument that from a broader societal perspective at the moment AI has been a net negative on culture and discourse and and all of that. But I end up being a weirdly optimistic person about enterprise AI in certain ways because it's precisely the enterprise's interest in risk security performance and results that that brings this technology to heel a little bit instead of just puking out like inaccurate information all the various lawyers that have like screwed up in front of judges with you know with inaccurate and made up case law and different services firms that have tried to put this in front of clients that have errors and mistakes in it and then of course you get into you know mistakes with public policy reports and all of that and it's like oh my God but but but also there's real potential in this technology if you do it right. But there's a lot of naive taste. So for example you'll hear from a lot of my analyst colleagues they'll say oh it's all about data and data quality and and in other words what they're trying to say is that if you put the right data into AI then then it you're going to get a good result. Well that's true up until a point and it absolutely is true that you can get a lot better for performance out of LLMs like in an enterprise context if you feed them appropriate what's called context and the discipline of doing that is called context engineering. But the thing is that you're still ultimately have an LLM which is a probabilistic system. LLMs do have a tendency to ignore sometimes what you feed them. So so this is the other BS that we get oh it's all about data quality and what that does is it gives people the illusion that if you feed it in it's you're gonna get a result every time no you're not you you you have to take a bunch of measures to address that. And guess what? There are measures you can do to address that but I get so frustrated with these lazy narratives and and people throw out these words. So for example they say you got to ground the LLM well it you don't ground the LLM because grounding implies that there's a base layer of factual world knowledge that the LLM relies upon that's not the case. LLMs are language predictors ultimately and they're not grounded they're provided with context through through you know tool calls and rag and things like that. But that's it it's not a band-aid that's unfair it's more sophisticated than that. But it's a way of trying to get them to take into account out that's not the same as grounding and and the reason that I don't like terms like that is because someday I think these systems will be grounded in real knowledge and know-how. And and if we abuse that term then we're doing everyone a disservice in terms of okay actually this is a probabilistic system and I need to understand it on those terms and design my use cases with that in mind. So you can see how I get into trouble here because I even push back on some of the things that my fellow analysts say.

Dave Reddy: 29:43

Well good for you. Somebody's got to do it and and look we have plenty of clients in AI and I think we obviously wouldn't sign up with them if we didn't think they were doing good work. But there is a lot of superbole out there.

Speaker: 29:55

Well and and and I constructed a pretty unique course of study for myself because I've taken some some AI courses but on top of that I I study disinformation I study the cultural impact I study the creative impact I do workshops on AI skills with college students and I dig very deep into the technology one way I describe it okay so let me just let me fess up to something I still feel a little bit of shame in my soul for overhyping blockchain back in the day. Forgive you and and and that was a point in my career where I was still learning how to put technologies to the real test of customer use cases and results. It took me about maybe 50 hours of study to truly understand the technical limitations of blockchain and why I had to put the brakes on that the metaverse took me about four hours blockchain took me about 50 AI has taken me about 5,000 hours. And the reason yeah and and and I'm still working every day on it researching researching because it's obvious this technology is going to have a profound impact on culture and society and projects. So our my job what I'm trying to do is not just be a critic but be a constructive critic in the sense of how can an individual respond to these changes in their own lives in their own work but also in a project capacity. So I'm trying to strike a balance between the utopian techno optimists and the critics and say we gotta we gotta find a way forward here because unlike the metaverse you can't just ignore this and pretend like it's gonna go away in due course because it is not given all that time you spent learning about AI for yourself and researching it how do you use it?

Dave Reddy: 31:35

And and and and is it and the second question after that would be is it a good thing for storytelling for content for analysis or a bad thing?

Speaker: 31:45

Well you've asked a really loaded question and it's a fascinating one. I do use AI sometimes I'm I'm a I'm a little bit love hate with it because I do believe that these these tools were built with stolen content and technology by the way including stealing our own content on Diginomica. So so I have a little bit of mixed feelings around some of that but I do use some of it and so for example like if it can help my workflows I'll use it. One reason why I really hate the AI first mantra that that so many companies are trotting out these days is that there's two problems with it. First there's so much pressure already on workers to like to try to be productive in the face of either real or imagined job loss from these technologies that they're already under the gun. And now you're saying AI first wait shouldn't it just be customer first? Like it like shouldn't our goal be quote unquote's outcomes or results and however we get to that performance we should be measured based on how we deliver for the people that matter to our business and however we do that we should just do it. And the thing is that some people to answer your question really thrive on these tools like for example software engineers some of them use them extensively but some of them find that they're not that efficient for them at this point in time. Everyone should be evaluating for their own self based on what they use. I'll give you a great example I try to use a bunch of these tools for PowerPoint slides because I stink at creating slides and I tried a bunch of them and they were really disappointed. But finally one of my colleagues Derek Dupree is pointed me towards gamma and I'm blown away by gamma's ability to create it does a bunch of other stuff but man it can create some good slides from my content. And now it inserts a lot of techno optimistic buzzwords in there that I have to detox and there may be ways of fixing that in the prompt but but the slides look great and I stink at it I I created a beautiful 15 slide deck in like an hour and that would have taken me like a weekend and and and I'm not even I wouldn't have even like been very good at it. I also use AI for prod podcast processing and optimization. I use it for AI video editing too so take a an hour long video show like the live ones I use they're they're really fun if you're there but if you're not there a lot of people don't want to watch that replay so I'll chunk out the highlight clips with with AI it does a relatively good job of picking a lot of the best clips I never have time for that. So for reviewing my content but I don't use it for writing I think AI is wildly overrated for content generation we live in an attention economy like like for actually writing a good article nah and and so I think for example in marketing which is one of the things you asked me about I think people often get infatuated with oh I want it to do the creative when in fact it's a lot better at managing the creative personalizing the creative and creating campaigns around that creative and maybe executing on those campaigns like who wants to create an elaborate marketing campaign when from scratch when AI can create a 70% or 80% campaign that you can then flesh out the rest. So one thing I get frustrated with is people not looking at these tools and being honest about what they can and can't do. And I really worry sometimes that okay I like it because I I don't have to stare at a blank screen. Well sometimes staring at a blank screen and looking inside yourself for inspiration is exactly what you do need to do. And don't let the tools take that challenge away from you when in fact digging deep and coming up with something original is so core to the human experience. But by the way it's also pretty damn good for the attention economy as well. On the other hand AI can be great for brainstorming headlines. So if you create something yourself and and but you need a really good title in it and you don't quite have the right one it can be great for that. And so like I think you have to be really nuanced in how you apply this instead of just this knee jerk thing around oh AI can create all our blog content now. I had a CMO say I wrote this I had a CMO tell me like I wrote this blog with AI take a look at it I was like this is crap dude like like why didn't you write about your own challenges in a personal way that it may someday AI may someday grow a soul and be able to write but uh that'll probably be the day I jump off a cliff because I look look I don't I don't rule anything out the the what people do need to understand though is that the barriers to that and this is another thing that you you like my little AI zingers the the barriers to that the barriers to that are are are strong right now. So some of the folks that have won the Turing award for their contributions to the current generation of AI folks like Rich Sutton Jan Lacoon to an extent Yashi Bengio have walked away from LLMs as their focal point for their research because they feel that at best it's a small part of what what true AGI would look like and and it's a back to the lab thing. And even Ilya who used to work from OpenAI if you listen to his most recent podcast with Dwarcash he essentially says the same thing he says we're moving from a scale era to a research area and and we got to go back to the research and that's not glamorous. But yes someday I do think it's possible that machines will have quote unquote souls and you know and we'll have to contend with that. And it's useful to talk about it that sometimes just to think about how that would change our world but for now they don't and and and it's it's time to be honest about what they can and can't do. And what they're not very good at is is is earning sustained attention with content. That's not what they're good at. What they're really good at though is things like being a companion for someone so a ton of people use this for therapy which I don't recommend. But the point is they're really good at interacting and and in a B2B context for example I think they're really good at pulling out interests, engagement. What do you want? What are you looking for? What do you need right now? They're really good at that interaction thing. I they're not as good at the content thing.

Dave Reddy: 37:54

So so you've written five books and I want to speak about your last one in a second but I'm just curious after hearing you talk all about that all about that what's your next book going to be on that's a really good question.

Speaker: 38:04

I'm working on a philosophical novel which is kind of like getting back to your it's kind of one of my legacy projects of like what have I learned in this lifetime and so I'm gonna try to express that in like a fictional capacity. Cool. It's sort of inspired by Dosieski's notes from underground but of course I'm never going to achieve that level of mastery but that's the inspiration if anyone wants to check right yeah but um from a nonfiction standpoint I'm not totally sure yet but I think I think there's something around this sort of navigating our creative landscapes around this technology that keeps drawing me in is like how do we you know achieve our human purpose amidst this technology that I keep getting drawn back into. And I don't I don't quite have a book around it yet but I've written a bunch of articles that hit on that theme. So book projects kind of like eventually emerge where it's like you must write this but for now I'm writing blog posts because that's a good way to get closer to that. So I write a lot about that when I can.

Dave Reddy: 39:06

Your last book which I believe was your fifth Reaching the B2B Informed Buyer the Case for a different framework without cannibalizing book sales what is that framework?

Speaker: 39:16

I don't mind cannibalizing book sales I made that available free in a lot of formats already but um in a and in a few ebook formats it's priced very low like I think $1.99 just to get in. But anyway the whole thing around that is basically it's a contrast between what happened was I I I have all these things I'm really interested in. So creative event design and why events are broken next gen analyst relations and why analyst industry analyst is broken and content and why why we need to change that and and and media and how that needs to be different. And I had all these themes but then I was like they all need a they really need a framework and a methodology. And so it ended up being this sort of this idea that That engaging B2B buyers is a year-long thing that's all the time. It's not about, oh, we had this great event and see you next year. The world is moving too fast. And the idea is how do you earn trust with buyers? And it's through community, it's through building healthy communities, and it's through content and it's through creative events, and it's through this web of interconnection and earning trust through authority and expertise, which by the way is another thing that people want to surrender to LLMs, which they should not. Domain experts are still incredibly important. And so all of those things coming together, and the book was an attempt to say, okay, John, pull this all into one methodology and approach. And the idea behind opt-in communities is it's a juxtaposition against this fantasy that we can predict every what everyone needs from a content perspective with AI. You know, it's and we can just kind of do this in this real-time contextual moment. Like, and you've seen the attempts at this when you go online, Dave, and you see like the the machines are trying to predict what to show you, right? And they'll show you an ad, but it's what you were interested in yesterday, but it's not today. And the thing is that the human context moment to moment shifts too much now because there's no work-life separation anymore. So I think Dave is really interested in price, stock price, because we just talked about that in our podcast. But in fact, you just heard from a relative and they're having some trouble. Your context has totally shifted, right? And and the idea that machines can guess that is so preposterous. But that's what a lot of marketing people were fantasizing about. So what I said was, I want to juxtapose these things and take an outspoken view at opt-in communities and how B2B buyer engagement is year-round. And I've written about this in articles since then, so you can look at it on Dijonama if you want. But the point is, I start by juxtaposing them as if they're at odds, but they're actually not really at odds that much because if you build the opt-in community, what you then have is trusted validated data, which is, despite my earlier critique, a core component of good AI, if you if you will. And so on top of that, of course, you can build all kinds of cool personalization features and use AI in a variety of ways. And the other day on the future of CRM, on this um live video that I was a guest on, I talked about how why do we try to predict what Dave is thinking about in the moment when this new technology allows us to ask him? So my thing is quit trying to use these technologies to predict everything, which can be really creepy, by the way, in addition to being inaccurate. And just ask Dave what he's up to and and and if he needs more information on this or that, but do it in a much more conversational way, right? Not that, not that crappy sales bot that that attacks you the moment you get to a vendor website and and starts trying to slot you into a prospect category, but something more open-ended that says, hey Dave, what are you interested in? Like, oh, I'm interested in this kind of content. Oh, really? What format do you like? Oh, how often do you like it? All of that. Why not instead of trying to predict everything, like ask? And the beauty of the opt-in community is that once you've opted in, I'm saying you can continue to interrupt me in my preferred format. So I don't have to guess and annoy you because you've you're bought in. Like, so for example, with your podcast, right? I'm a subscriber, so you don't have to like nag me all the time about hey, have you heard this? Have you heard that? Nope. Because you've already got me bought in. And doesn't that make your life a lot easier? It's one less email I have to send every month. And that's and that's the beauty and the magic of that approach. And and and I I still feel like I'm swimming upstream on it, but the really smart companies have figured this out. And if you go to vendor shows where there's a really healthy, dynamic community, you can spot the difference. And companies like Salesforce have have have built in justified the because everyone will then say, well, how do you justify that from a business standpoint? And it's true that some of these things are magic and and aren't easily quantified, but a lot of them are quantified. Salesforce, for example, quantifies it in terms of things like the most active community members are more likely to purchase more, they upsell and they they buy more and all of that. And so they they get reinforced by that. But one of the things I always say to people around the metrics conversation, which I think is really important to quickly touch on here in our discussion, is you can no longer, if you're someone like me who's kind of an idealist around let's create these, you know, incredible content and exceptional content and you know all of this, you you no longer have the luxury of letting the metrics and analytics reside in someone else's hands and say, well, no, you you have to agree to be measured as well and say, if this is really impactful, like if Dave's podcast, for example, is really impacting my life, I need to be able to quantify that. I need to be able to show how that matters. So instead of surrendering the metrics, we have to redefine the metrics and create metrics that really matter. And so one of the things we do on Dignomica, for example, is we we do tell our partners, for example, like how many people have read their articles and stuff, but we focus a lot more on things like what is the total engaged time? Like how much, how many hours do people listen to the podcasts involving you or read the articles involving you? And what do the reader journeys look like? Where do they go? Do they go from our site to yours? Do they click on certain things? What, what industries and topics are they engaging around? And by the way, do they carry those conversations over to LinkedIn and engage there and all of that? And so instead of surrendering the metrics, you have to redefine the metrics to capture the things that you really care about. And and that sort of brings the philosophy to a head.

Dave Reddy: 45:40

Yeah, the simplest metrics are can be interesting, but they can also be deceiving. And it's certainly something we practice here with our market intelligence team at Big Valley.

Speaker: 45:48

But Well yeah, one of our most popular articles in the history of Digynomica, our former colleague Den Hallett wrote it something, I think, around fixing the glass on a on a iOS tablet or something. And it messed up our metrics for years to come because he just he just did it on a whim, and you know, and occasionally that'll happen with the branded post, like like Stuart wrote a thing on digital transformation for Weight Watchers, and it got hundreds and hundreds of thousands of views. But we said, like, this is a bunch of Facebook traffic from Weight Watchers aficionados. This isn't reaching our key, but it screwed up the stats, and so we had to find ways of pulling it out. So the point being, like, like like like you said, you have to be really careful because sometimes you're high-fiving around, oh, we have this viral moment. But part of my philosophy is that viral moments are a lot less important than sustained engagement and trust. And and especially when you look at AI, for example, trust, establishing trust that you're a reputable vendor around that technology is so critically important.

Dave Reddy: 46:51

So you just laid down a lot of good stuff. What we what we call here at Big Valley, the a pointy point of view. You had lots of pointy. Anything that you wanted? Absolutely. And yet you you shared with me online that you don't think you could launch Digimonica successfully today. Why is that?

Speaker: 47:11

Well, it's just that sites like like we have this really good, sustained, ingrained thing in our community. Like, oh, okay, a lot that you know, B2B is a big place, so sometimes people haven't heard of us, but a lot of people have and they've developed reader habits over the years. Launching a site like this now would be so challenging just because like there's so much of an emphasis on walled gardens and keeping people where you are. So, for example, you probably found this in your own work. Like, you want people to maybe move from LinkedIn onto your clients' properties and engage in content there, and LinkedIn desperately wants you to stay there. So they try to make it seem like any link you click on could be this toxic link, and you're you're leaving the trusted, cozy confines of LinkedIn, which by the way is a promotional cesspool that isn't worth spending your whole day in. So, like, but that's the battle now is like these walled gardens dominate, and then and then and then search, for example, like Google really wants you to do this inline search thing where yeah, it sometimes includes some links here and there in the con, but it's trying to answer with AI, even if the answer like the search for AI can be wrong. I encountered that the other day, just totally wrong information. But the thing is, like, it wants you there, and and and and so destination websites are harder than ever. Now, we did a bunch of things to combat that, like various apps, we have all kinds of RSS, all these different ways you can connect with us, and we're always building more and but and you know, all of that. And we create a really accessible website, so it's got like dark mode and dyslexic mode and a bunch of stuff that you can't get on other places where you would consume content. But it's still an uphill battle to do that. And if we didn't have 13 years of history, I think it would be really tough. Now, the one thing you might be able to do is if you had a ton of venture capital, you could maybe blast your way in. But I think it's really, really hard to do it because we bootstrapped it. And one of the advantages of that is that we were able to really do things on our own terms and not run out of runway. And what you saw with a lot of media startups is they ended up collapsing or getting fizzled out. Like we've seen a lot of layoffs at places like TechCrunch and ZDNet, especially in the enterprise side. But when the when the when the revenue model and the cost model are so high stakes, it's hard. We were able to really bootstrap it, which was a key to establishing kind of a lean profitability model. And and we're so grateful for that. And you know, I pinch myself every day and I tell my colleagues, like, let's kick ass on plan A, because I don't have a plan B in this industry. Like, and and of course I could find a job in this industry, I get that, but I don't have a good fallback, so we got to make this thing rock.

Dave Reddy: 49:55

Well, I think you're doing just fine with plan A. My last question is always a little fun, although I have a feeling I know the answer given where you're calling me from or zooming me from. Riversiding me from, would I guess would be the Oklahoma or Central Massachusetts?

Speaker: 50:13

Oh my gosh. Do you do you know there's this like new Sylvester Stallone series called Tulsa King? It's like this gangster thing. I guess there's a few years. So I started watching Tulsa King because I'm from Tulsa, right? Yeah, and um when they showed some of the Tulsa landmarks like the driller or the big cement driller and stuff, it made my heart pound. And home is home, right? Like like home has home is in your soul, right? Like, and and so in in my heart, I'm always in Tulsa, but in my persona, I'm very much like Northeast. Like, like it's not so much central mass. I mean, I live in Northampton, which is kind of like a little like New York City wannabe small town with hipster pretensions, but but I I'm just kind of a northeastern person in the sense that I'm kind of like this fast-talking intellectual, like keep it real kind of person. Like I don't fit in as well on the West Coast, for example. And so that's one of the interesting dynamics because I'm not a Silicon Valley person, but obviously I intersect with a lot of that stuff. And one of my collaboration partners is Constellation Research, which is based out there and stuff. But I'm very much a Northeast person in my personality, I think, and I glommed onto that. The weather challenges me sometimes, but I don't think I could ever I don't think I could ever leave the Northeast at this point, at least in my professional, but my heart will always beat Tulsa. In fact, right now, listeners don't know, but I'm wearing a Woody Guthrie cap, and it's from the museum that's based in Tulsa. So no kidding.

Dave Reddy: 51:44

Okay.

Speaker: 51:44

Yep.

Dave Reddy: 51:45

And I actually do have one more question. How in God's name? You've been there how long now?

Speaker: 51:49

In in Western Mass?

Dave Reddy: 51:51

Yeah.

Speaker: 51:51

Oh, well, since college in 1986, except for a couple summers in Boston.

Dave Reddy: 51:56

Right. All right. So you're in Boston. So you were even even worse based on the question I've got that. How have you not developed the New England ass? It took me years to get rid of mine.

Speaker: 52:07

That is an absolute mystery. I don't know. Like it's really strange. I I think I lost a little bit of my Oklahoma twang over the years. But if you folks from that region do recognize my voice, though, like like some people, oh, you're from the Midwest or you're from Oklahoma, whatever. I don't know, Dave. I I consider myself a little bit fortunate because I enjoy that Boston accent, but I don't know if I would want to have it. Do I have an accent? I don't know. I think I'm like generic American dude now.

Dave Reddy: 52:37

Yeah, I mean you're you're like, you know, that's that's why they always have uh the the the the guys who do the nightly news are always from the Midwest because they don't really have an accent, you know?

Speaker: 52:45

So Yeah, I think I'm just like generic American. I mean, when I'm talking with my with my British and UK colleagues into Dynamica, like it's it's pretty obvious who the American is. But but other than that, it's it's sort of, I don't know. I I guess I'm free to to move across the country as I see fit, which is good because I do travel a lot. And hopefully those listening will maybe see me on the road somewhere.

Dave Reddy: 53:09

Absolutely. Well, John, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it. This was a fantastic conversation, a lot to think about, and thanks again.

Speaker: 53:17

Thanks, Dave. You you really drew something out of me today. That was fun.

Dave Reddy: 53:21

I'd like to thank you all for listening today, and once again, a big thank you to John Reed of Diginomica. Also, a quick note of thanks to the Pressing Matters team. Last month, Pressing Matters was named Best PR Podcast by Reagan and PR Daily. It's quite an honor, and it's one I share with producer Eileen Fernandez de Soto, our whole crew, and of course, our fabulous guests. Thank you. Now, next month, please don't forget to join us when we chat with yet another member of the B2B Tech Top 200. In the meantime, if you've got feedback on today's podcast or if you'd like to learn more about Big Valley marketing and how we identified the B2B Tech Top 200, be sure to drop me an email at dready at bigvalley.co. That's D-R-E-D-D Y at Big Valley, all one word.co. No M. You can also email the whole team at pressing matters at bigvalley.co. Once again, thanks for listening. And as always, think big.