Blog

I detest the term “thought leadership.” It’s a pet peeve, but thought leadership isn’t something that you somehow “do.” Tim Marklein nails it when he makes the case that this is something that has to be earned. It’s not to be – or shouldn’t be – lumped into the same sentence with demand generation. SplittingRead more

Each month Big Valley tracks top conversations in tech and it’s hardly a surprise to learn that Software as a Service (SaaS) loomed as a big topic of interest in January. Even before we understood the full magnitude of the impact that Covid would have on businesses, Gartner was predicting that SaaS would generate aroundRead more

Even before COVID forced us all to spend inordinate amounts of time at home, I was a sucker for quarterly conference calls where publicly-held firms field no-nonsense questions from a collection of impatient Wall Street analysts. There’s really nothing like it. This is the no-BS zone where, for an hour or so, the sundry moversRead more

Technology is a fascinating, changing story but it’s not always easy to understand. That’s something to keep front-of-mind before sitting down with a reporter. The other thing to remember is that many – maybe most? – of the tech writers you’re going to meet aren’t tech experts. That doesn’t mean they can’t grasp the nuancesRead more

Back during my newsroom days, I drove a very nice comms manager at a hot Silicon Valley startup absolutely crazy. Her CEO had come up with a killer idea how to make good use of some of the unused network infrastructure left over from the pre-dotcom crash era. It was clear to me – asRead more

There are times to pitch reporters during a crisis and then there are times to stay far, far away. As the world copes with the coronavirus outbreak and its social, business and policy impacts, there are very few “other” stories for the time being. Reporters don’t want to hear about whizzbang new widgets or version 3.X of your SaaSRead more

I’m part of a generation of (aging) sports fans who grew up listening to Howard Cosell, the ABC broadcaster who became famous for “telling it like it is.” In an era when sports announcers were expected to stick to just calling the games, Cosell broke the mold. Sports, he said, was about a lot moreRead more