Live from Advocamp 2016, Jon Reed catches Joseph Jaffe in a spirited mood after his keynote, "Using your brand to create an army of zealots." This frank/informal chat debates the pros/cons of brand zealotry, with Jaffe explaining why politicians like Trump and Obama have changed the marketing discourse. Jon worries this groundswell marketing has a dark side - Jaffe responds. Jaffe also hits on key concepts from his last book Z.E.R.O., which explore the futility of broadcast advertising. The guys also kick around the viability of customer advocates and advocate-driven marketing - a key theme of Influitive's Advocamp event.

With a soothing fountain providing Zen vibes in the background, Jon talks to fellow diginomica contributor Brian Sommer about enterprise buyers and digital change - Live from the Acumatica Summit 2016. Brian shares some recent digital turbulence and stories of how companies are losing the plot. He also reflects on recent projects to discuss what enterprise buyers need. The guys then hit on why sales and marketing is too often out of step with today's enterprise buyer. Note: part two of this podcast gets into specifics on Acumatica's cloud ERP play.

In this completely unscripted chat with Brian Solis, author of a new book on experience design, Jon asks Brian about whether experience design can be a reality given the data silos and culture issues that prevent this from happening. Brian shares his research and provides a view on why user and customer experience can - and must - change. Jon aired out a number of cynical views on customer experience. Brian's answers included starting points for customers on this new "experience architecture."

During this informal, on-site podcast taping in Boston, Jon Reed of diginomica.com talks with three members of the Onapsis team (Alex, Alex, and Dave) about what "white hat hacking" means for today's enterprise. The guys also talk about how Onapsis identifies ERP security breaches, and how they work with Oracle and SAP to make sure those companies have appropriate patches before taking security issues public. 

In a special edition of "Jon and Den's digital dump," Jon and Den of diginomica.com break down three days of SAP TechEd Las Vegas. The guys assess the keynotes, the pros and cons of SAP's S/4HANA strategy, and whether the "digital core" approach is going to work. Will the "customer engagement" play work against CRM rivals? The guys also kick around SAP's progress on developer engagement, and give a final review.

In the longer, "director's cut" version of this SAP TechEd 2015 on-site podcast, Jon Reed and Dick Hirsch kick around the main conference takeaways and the S/4HANA challenge. Dick shares the main themes he was investigating and the latest on the SAP HANA Cloud Platform. SAP's open source initiatives, particularly Cloud Foundry via Hybris YaaS (Hybris as s service), are covered. The guys also set up the themes, particularly around S/4HANA, to look for in Barcelona. SAP's approach to bloggers/communications is also reviewed. 

Jon went on-site to Conversocial's NYC headquarters for an informal chat with Conversocial CEO Joshua March about the viability of social channels for customer service. March shares what his company has been up to since he and Jon first corresponded and they were a "cool vendor" to watch. Jon shares his social service beefs and March talks about how social customer service shouldn't just be lip service, but lead all the way to resolution. March also speaks to CRM integration, always an issue when you pursue a specialized product.

​​In this extended, director's cut edition, live from SAP Controlling 2015, Jon talks with SAP Mentor Julien Delvat about the buzz behind predictive, and the guys explore some new HANA use cases Julien is working on in the S4/HANA context.​ They also talk about changing customer views on HANA at the conference. 

Gary Cokins, internationally-recognized expert and author in EPM and predictive analytics, gives Jon some straight talk on analytics after his keynote at the Controlling 2015 conference. Cokins explains the rise of EPM, and the challenges CFOs are facing. Using memorable phrases like "management by embarrassment," Cokins peels behind predictive hype and explains the role of technology, not as a cure-all, but as an enabler.