White papers

When it comes to IT and telecoms it’s not just the technology itself that is becoming increasingly complex. Deciding which technologies to invest in to improve business performance, how much to spend, which vendors are going to be able to best meet an organisation’s needs and, ultimately, which products and services to purchase are all difficult decisions that are likely to be individual to any given organisation.

This is where industry analysts come into play, helping to shape and align technology-related buying decisions with the specific needs of an organisation.

This white paper, authored by Kim Crosby, founder of CustomerClix, an Analyst Relations and Training agency, looks at how analysts can provide insight and expertise across all areas of IT and telecoms

At many companies, it was still possible five or 10 years ago, to believe that the brand was everything the company said about its products and services, the sum total of its logo, its advertising, its press releases, its sponsorships.

Today, the brand is no longer determined by what the company says about itself; it’s determined by all the things that are said about the company by others, in the real world (over garden fences, in hair salons, the supermarket check-out line, over drinks and dinners) and in digital and social media.

This white paper, authored by Paul Holmes, president and CEO of The Holmes Group, looks at social media and the role of PR

Media training’s broad view explains how journalism works – it provides a day-in-the-life of a newspaper, a magazine, a broadcaster. Most executives don’t really know how things function on a paper/magazine or in a studio – with alarming speed, hasty decisions, rewriting, and editors’ changes, all as major news breaks that completely shatters “Plan A”, sometime minutes before air time or hours before a print deadline.

Mark Halper, freelance business, media and technology journalist for TIME, Fortune, The Hollywood Reporter and the UK's Independent on Sunday, looks at the benefits of media training.

Why have people bought into this service so quickly, and enabled it to become so disruptive?

Online services this decade have been about participation. Services like Flickr, Facebook and Myspace survive on the willingness of their users to share their information within the system. Twitter relies on that too, but also takes things a step further; you just know that something is going to be successful when its users become codevelopers, not just sharing their own data, but creating whole subsystems to adapt and enhance the service.

The author, Danny Bradbury, started as a freelance journalist in 1989. He writes for titles including the Financial Times, the Guardian, and the National Post in Canada.

Anybody under 30 today would be shocked at the primitive state of the office of 1990. There was no DTP so we printed out copy that was subbed on paper and then taken away to be rekeyed. Proofs were sent back by fax on thermal printer that made the work of final proofing akin to interpreting lost languages on ancient parchment scrolls.

Former journalist, Martin Veitch, reflects on the best part of two decades at the virtual coalface that is technology journalism.