I am simultaneously disappointed and excited to announce that I will be departing Forrester in mid-February.  Being an analyst has been a terrific experience, but I’ve been offered the opportunity to lead community and collaboration at a Fortune 500 organization.  This is an excellent opportunity to dig deeply into the opportunities and challenges for a great organization, to return to leading and managing a team of bright and eager professionals, and to apply all that I’ve learned in my time at Forrester. 

Landing the analyst position at Forrester was, in many ways, a dream come true. I have enormous respect for the thought leaders at Forrester, and being part of their ranks was edifying, fun, and energizing. I cherish the many chances I was provided to meet great thinkers, both on the Interactive Marketing team and within the clients we serve.  There is nothing I will miss more than the analysts, researchers, project managers, and account and sales team members on the Interactive Marketing team. They are an incredibly smart, dedicated, and hardworking group of individuals. 

Ah, that pesky sales force. Why don’t they:

• Follow the selling methodology you’ve developed with much expense and rolled out with great sweat?
• Call on more senior-level buyers, for goodness sake — don’t they realize those are the people with adult money and fat wallets?
• Just use the tools you’ve developed for them — all they need to know has already been figured out.
• Sell more stuff to their existing customers — with so many things to sell, how can they NOT be successful?
• Stay on your brand message? It’s like each rep has created their own version of the truth.

In three days, it will be the two year anniversary of my first blog post on Experience: The Blog.  Originally intended to be an exploration of experiential marketing strategies, my interest and focus quickly turned to social media and how the growth of the peer-to-peer groundswell creates challenges and opportunities for marketers.  It is apt to recall how my blog started as one thing and became another, because change is in the air again.  I'd like to reflect on that change, put it into context and invite you to join me as I shift my blog publishing to a new address.

A month ago, news broke that Forrester would be altering its blog policies and analysts would shift their industry-related blogging into a new, common platform on Forrester.com.  I posted at the time that I believed aggregating Forrester's thought leadership in one place made sense and that I was eager to continue blogging, sharing news and building my reputation within the new Forrester blog. 

The reaction was swift and emotional.  Hundreds of tweets and blog posts weighed in on the topic; a few supported the new blogging policies, but most did not.  One person tweeted I was "licking the boots of (my) corporate paymasters," and a friend sent heartfelt condolences at the loss of my blog.  I ignored the tweet and assured my friend that I was not progressing through any of the stages of grief (unless bemusement was one of those stages.)

It's with great pleasure that I introduce our new blogging platform to you! Please let me know your thoughts.

In this first post on the new platform, I'd like to introduce Cliff Condon, the project manager, who likes to share his thoughts on Forrester blogs and the new functionality with you:

• Everyone’s welcome here.  Forrester analysts use blogs as an input into the research they produce, so having an open, ongoing dialogue with the marketplace is critical. Clients and non-clients can participate – so I encourage you to be part of the conversations on Forrester blogs.

• We still have team blogs focused on role professionals. Our role blogs, such as the CIO blog and the Interactive Marketing blog, are a rollup of all the posts from the analysts serving that specific role professional. By following a role team blog, you can participate in all the conversational threads affecting a role.

• And now we’ve added analyst blogs as well.  If you prefer to engage directly with your favorite analyst, you can. Look on the right-hand rail of the team blog and you’ll see a list of the analyst blogs.  Just click on their name to go to their blog.  Or type their name into “Search”.  An analyst blog is a place for the analyst to get reaction to their ideas and connect with others shaping the marketplace.  You’ll find the blogs to be personal in tone and approach.