RSS 2.0 FeedIt was the best of times, it was the worst of times...
Wow! We actually got the first issue of TeleMedia Strategy published the week of January 19th after a couple months of work and the unbelievable support of a large number of friends. Thank you all! Although it's really been less than a week, it seems that the site has been well received and the subscriber base is growing steadily.
So how'd all this get started? Well. like I said in a couple of other places on the site, it seemed every time we had a party, all we did was talk shop. In our case, shop is telecom consulting for many of the major carriers. Those guys are really worried about the new economy, web 2.0, digital lifestyle, or whatever you want to call it. No matter what you call it, the carriers are under a huge threat of being marginalized with their traditional businesses commoditizing and their place in the new business far from being certain.
Now my background has always been on the network side and I didn't want to find myself marginalized professionally either so I'd been thinking for some time how to best do a skills refresh while still in my existing job. Since the internet world is seemingly going to an economy based on digital content, I wanted to find a way to dabble in that world and explore all the things I keep hearing about... like Google's tools, the advertising revenue model, and what the latest internet-based SAAS capabilities were doing to traditional telecom, entertainment, media, and IT business cases.
So the idea of doing a magazine to explore the industry convergence seemed like a very interesting way to dip my toe in the water, learn a lot I didn't know, have some fun, and build my network of professional contacts. Hence, I decided to spend some time and money putting together what is now TeleMedia Strategy and to do it right. I wanted to do a first-class property utilizing all the latest capabilitie, and mot importantly I wanted to do much of the work myelf - hands-on. I know of no better way to learn than by doing it ground up.
Once the decision was made, the rest was just a matter of rolling up my sleeves and breaking out the credit card. So it was off to the internet to start researching what it would take to produce a digital magazine. More next time...