TechTalk, an online community that hopes to serve as a gathering spot where technology managers can get unbiased advice and opinions from like-minded colleagues. TechDecisions spoke with Mark LaVecchia and Steve Greenblatt, founders of TechTalk, about the recently live website, and what the community hopes to grow into moving forward.
TD: What does TechTalk hope to achieve now that the website is up and running?
SG: TechTalk is meant to be the community that can bring all technology managers together. The website gives us the ability to attract attention from the outside, to get people to understand what it is that we’re doing, be able to share information, and hopefully to bring people to the community, which is the private LinkedIn group. That’s where technology managers will be able to share experiences and network with one another, and have that safe zone that they can call their own. The website is now the front-facing part of it.
ML: For the longest time technology managers’ role within our business has been growing dramatically, their involvement in our business has been increasing dramatically. What hasn’t been increasing dramatically for them is the construction of a place for them to gather together, to share what they are facing from equipment, installations, working with integrators or working directly with manufacturers — any of the items that they’d like to talk about together, whether off the record or on the record, to share their own experiences. They’ve basically been able to gather maybe once or twice a year, at trade shows, around a table and share ideas. Then a year goes by and maybe they have a couple conference calls. What this does is give them a place that they have at all times. They can come here to share their experiences, to ask questions amongst each other about challenges they might face, and to share successes that they’ve had.
TD: Who else, aside from technology managers, can gain value from the information on the website?
SG: The website is a place where anybody in the industry can interact with or learn about technology managers. Podcasts, blogs, and information that are general will be posted and that’s one of the purposes of the website. What we hope to do is gain awareness for this community, that they are an important part of the industry and that they’re gaining a lot more of an increased role and responsibility. It’s important for them to have visibility, so we do encourage integrators, manufacturers, consultants, sales reps, etc., to get on the mailing list to learn about what information is being put out there. There will be blogs that are shared that will hopefully help them to understand the needs of this group. There will also be times where they will have access to speak to this community, possibly in a webinar, as a guest on a webinar, and by contributing on the blog.
ML: Outside of technologies, that trifecta of integrator-consultant-manufacturer will be able to come here and, to some extent, get inside of the minds of a lot of the technology managers — what they’re talking about, where their systems are going — and be able to glean information. This is going to give them a place to find out what the needs are, what the challenges are, and, ultimately, what each of them can do individually to make life easier for this growing group of customers in our business.
TD: What type of content can people visiting the site expect to find from TechTalk?
ML: I think you’re going to find some webinars, first of all, where we’re talking to technology managers. We have one up where we’ve talked to an integrator that works with technology managers to get an idea of what angles they have to come from in order to work better together. We’ll do some live webinars where we can bring people on to ask questions and moderate internally, so we can take some of the more prominent technology managers throughout the country, run a live webinar, and have people come in to ask questions and share ideas with them. We’ll also post blogs written by Steve, myself, technology managers, integrators, etc. We’re going to invite people to come in a share their thoughts. Maybe it’s a few paragraphs, maybe it’s a breakdown of a particular job they’ve done, challenges they’ve faces, successes they’ve had. A lot of those webinars and such will be run over audio only so people can download those for their listening pleasure.
SG: I think that, as far as tangible resources, those will probably be more limited to the private community. Mostly the website will be a place to interact, share ideas, there will be discussions about trends and challenges, and possibly a manufacturer can find out about specific needs that the community has. One of the things we’re finding in talking to the technology managers is how they like to learn and what their style is and what is important to them. We’re going to try to share that as well, basically our takeaways from talking to the community.
ML: We should add that this is going to be a safe community, meaning that we want technology managers can have a place to get together and discuss what is going on in their world without having to worry about being spammed. We want them to be able to talk openly amongst themselves, to share ideas amongst themselves, without worrying about people reaching out to get something from them. I say that because, in terms of consultants, manufacturers, integrators, this isn’t going to be a place for them to find leads on new jobs. That’s not what this is about. The idea is for us to give a community, first and foremost, to the technology managers. Once we glean the information from them, the type of topics and trends they’re discussing, some of that content will make it to general consumption so that people can get a peek inside of their minds. I’m an old sales guy, where you look for any lead you can get. This isn’t going to be that type of place.
SG: One thing that we learned in speaking with members of the community is that, right now, they have different places that they can go to get answers or interact with one another. Some of those places have a limited group, others are governed by an organization so that there are things that can and can’t be said. What we’re hoping to do is unify the group so that they have one place to go and it’s no holds barred. They’ll be able to discuss what they want to discuss and do what they want to do, and no one’s going to police them. They can make it their own.
TD: How can one join TechTalk, what are the qualifications, and what can members expect out of joining?
SG: As far as access to the website and getting on the mailing list, that is very open. To get into the private community, the qualification would be being a technology manager, which is described as working for an end user organization as somebody that either supports, maintains, or possibly builds and installs technology for their organization. Right now there is no cost. Down the road there may be a VIP group that is formed that might have cost associated with it, but right now the intention is building the group, gaining interest, and shaping this community to fit best for the technology managers.
ML: We have a couple of technology managers that we’re working with that will provide us with the insight we need to make sure that the people that populate this community are verified as technology managers by their employment. What we want are people that will come in to contribute. We want to make sure that people are not coming in under the guise of anything else for their own reasons. There will be a process in place over the next month or two wherein when somebody comes in we can verify who they are, where they’re from, and what their intentions are. Then we can make sure that this is the type of community that is beneficial for all of them.
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