Welcome to PR Vibes™, created by Calysto Communications to provide you with key insights into the publications and events in the communications industry. Today, we’re featuring a short interview with John Dix, editor in chief, Network World. Enjoy!
Can you tell us about Network World’s technology/market focus?
Our goal at Network World is to synthesize developments in the information technology industry to help IT executives make informed product and technology business decisions. So we’re covering everything from how companies are deploying large computing networks to developments in Internet technology and the problems associated with employees attaching their iPads to the corporate network.
Who are your target audiences/key customer segments?
I like to characterize the 2 million visitors to NetworkWorld.com and the 175,000 readers of our twice monthly print magazine as being responsible for the digital nervous systems of large organizations. They control the design, implementation and management of the systems used to support everything from mission critical computing to team collaboration and electronic commerce.
How does Network World differentiate itself?
For 25 years, Network World has been delivering a mix of breaking news and trend analysis crafted by the longest standing, most seasoned reporting staff in the business (and yes, I’ve been here from the beginning). We complement that with contributed opinion from a large stable of expert columnists and bloggers, and back it all up with unparalleled product testing from the Network World Lab Alliance, a federation of the best test organizations in the industry.
What do you do in terms of social media?
We have more than 4,000 followers of our Facebook page, 3,000 members in our LinkedIn community, and about 40,000 people following Network World and our reporters on Twitter. Our material is also often promoted in the Digg and Slashdot communities, which are more IT focused social outlets.
Has the social media channel changed the way you cover news?
Social media gives us new ways to follow developments/news and reach and interact with the audience, so in some ways it has facilitated information gathering, but it hasn’t changed what we cover. What we like most about it is the opportunity to create our own focused communities within these broader communities. That’s great. There is really no downside, as far as we’re concerned.
What are your thoughts on Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and how this trend will impact the enterprise?
While IT initially resisted the movement, about a year ago it became clear there was no holding back the tide, so it became a question of how best to control the flood of personal devices pouring in. That isn’t to say that many companies are actively encouraging people to go out and buy their own computing devices instead of issuing employees computers and smartphones and tablets (very few companies seem to be doing that). For most firms it is a question of establishing procedures for using personal devices to access corporate resources (some are building apps stores for this purpose) and policies about everything involved with that type of access. The latter, for example, has to spell out the company’s rights to examine the contents of your device if they believe the device has been compromised in some fashion. And employees may also have to give their employers the right to remotely erase all content on a personal device if the device is lost or stolen. Virtualization technology, however, is making it feasible to create secure work bubbles on personal devices that can be controlled by IT and reduce the need for some of these more draconian measures.
What additional services does Network World provide?
Network World hosts the IT Roadmap conference and expo in seven venues across the country each year, which is a full day, multi-track event focused on the hottest IT topics of the day. These face-to-face events are a great complement to our online community building efforts. Network World also serves up some 400,000 videos on the Network World YouTube channel each month.
Anything new on the horizon?
Last year we launched the Enterprise Cloud Services supplement series to explore the emerging interest in cloud computing, and that has proved to be quite popular. Although overhyped today, cloud technology does appear to be a meaningful new way to help enterprises to get more out of their IT investments.
What do you see as the key technology trends for the next year?
Virtualization technology continues to reshape the technology world. In the past, silos of servers/storage/networks/operating systems tended to be dedicated to specific jobs/tasks, meaning companies ended up with these highly specialized yet underutilized resources (after all, you have to build enough headroom into each one to accommodate peak demands). Virtualizing these resources decouples the jobs/tasks from the underlying infrastructure, meaning you can be more flexible in how you put the technology to work. While virtualization has been broadly adopted, we’re still in the early days and there is much more opportunity ahead.
How do you go about identifying emerging trends?
Talking to technology researchers in the vendor and academic communities, as well as tech buyers. This business is constantly changing — which is one of the things that makes it fascinating.
Over the course of your career, what would you say the biggest changes have been?
Over the course of 30 years, I’ve watched networking make computing more democratic. Where once just a few IT people controlled who had access to mainframe-based computing resources, the arrival of networks and mini computers pushed computing out to departments and regional branch offices, and then the rise of local networks and the PC saw the migration of computing to the desktop. Today, of course, advances in broadband and high speed wireless services mean people have more computing horsepower in their homes and even in their pockets than was ever conceivable when I started in this business.
The only thing that is surprising is the rate of change and innovation, and that makes following this industry so much fun.
On a personal note, can you tell us a bit about yourself? For instance, what’s your idea of a perfect day?
I’m an inveterate tinkerer, which means I’m always working on someone’s bike, lawn mower, dishwasher, or what have you. I do some building (garages, sheds, house remodeling, etc.) and a lot of woodworking — everything from beds to tables and cupboards to kitchens full of custom cabinet work. A perfect day is getting some of that puttering in, and then spending time with the family — either hiking, biking, skiing or goofing around at the beach.
And finally, if you could interview anyone, who would it be and why?
Maybe someone like Nathanael Greene Herreshoff, who was the naval architect that designed a lot of the America’s Cup sailboats in the early days, and went on to build a bunch of different size boats, all of them amazingly elegant and highly functional (many are still sailed today). When form meets function at a high level, something special is going on, and it would be fascinating to try to tease out some of what enables him to do that, get a little inside and see how easy or hard it is for him to achieve that, how he sweats the details, where he gets his satisfaction.