Some AR blogs I have been reading recently

A few new AR blogs have appeared in recent months. I've added them to my blog roll (over there, on the right) but wanted to highlight some that I find interesting.

The first is by Dale Vile, MD of Freeform Dynamics. Open Reasoning is "a vehicle to provide insight and commentary on the workings of the industry analyst community, particularly the community of smaller players in the market that live alongside the large global firms such as Gartner, Forrester, IDC, etc."

Another comes from SageCircle (recently relaunched by Carter Lusher and Dave Eckert). Their views are well worth a read and can be found on the SageCircle blog.

Until recently, Carter was head of AR for HP. Its corporate AR blog (which he set up) has some gems.

Bradshaw leaves Ovum for IDC

I hear that Ovum's David Bradshaw is leaving to join IDC. He starts on Monday 18 February.

Bradshaw has been with Ovum for over a decade. He is best known for his work in the CRM space.

Bloor on Analyst Relations

Robin Bloor has begun a series of blog posts called 'Analyst Relations: Dealing with Analysts'.

The series is pitched as providing "advice to technology vendors on how to become more effective in their relationships with analysts." Alternatively, Robin describes it as "a campaign to make my job easier."

I always find it interesting to see what analysts have to say on the subject of AR and Robin speaks a lot of sense. Any experienced AR professional worth their salary will find little new in what Robin says but he articulates the fundamentals in a very clear and easy to read way.

For beginners to AR (and for the many, many PR folk who really don't get the industry analysts or understand how to work with them), Robin's series should be required reading.

There are two posts so far (links below). I am looking forward to seeing more.

The Pre-Briefing

AR or PR

PS - I also found The IT Analyst Gallery on Robin's site. Very entertaining.

RedMonk - the world's first "make-side" analyst firm?

I was reading James Governor's blog earlier today (essential reading I'd suggest) and was struck by how he describes RedMonk:

"Other analyst firms primarily target sell-side or buy-side (the buyers or sellers of technology). We really don’t see the world that way. RedMonk’s core constituency is “make-side“: the makers and doers, hackers and players. They might work at vendors, at dotcoms, at service providers, or traditional enterprises. Open source and web oriented technologies are the bridges between them. Industry analysts they really need to be advocates to be effective. We are not user advocates. We’re not vendor advocates. We’re maker advocates."

James, I like it. And you have inspired me to make my first blog post of 2008.