James Maguire, Executive Director, TechVoices

We've had some Renaissance men and women on the show before, but I'm not sure if anyone can outdo James Maguire, the Executive Director of TechVoices. 

He's a composer and pianist who has recorded an album of original songs. He's the writer of non-fiction books on American culture. He's currently working on a novel. And he's still found time to put together a 20-year run as a tech journalist, including the past 15 months with TechVoices, the site he founded in March 2025.

James joined us to talk about his plans for TechVoices, his thoughts on how to fund journalism, and his life as a self-described creative dreamer for this episode of Pressing Matters from Big Valley Marketing, the podcast that brings you conversations with the top media and influencers in B2B tech. 

I'm Dave Reddy, Head of Big Valley Marketing's Media & Influencers practice, and I'm your host. Through research and good old-fashioned relationship building, we've identified B2B tech's top 200 media and influencers, including James. 

Here's our chat with James. Enjoy.

Transcript

Dave Reddy 0:00

We've had some Renaissance men and women on the show before, and I'm not sure if anyone can outdo James Maguire, the executive director of Tech Voices. He's a composer and pianist who has recorded an album of original songs. He's the writer of non-fiction books on American culture. He's currently working on a novel. And he still found time to put together a 20-year run as a tech journalist, including the past fifteen months with TechVoices, the site h e founded in March 2025. James joined us to talk about his plans for TechVoices, his thoughts on how to fund journalism and his life as a self-described creative dreamer for this episode of Pressing Matters from Big Valley Marketing, the podcast that brings you conversations with the top media and influencers in B2B Tech. I'm Dave Reddy, head of Big Valley Marketing's Media and Influencers Practice, and I'm your host. Through research and good old-fashioned relationship building, we've identified B2B Tech's top two hundred media and influencers. Here's our chat with James. Enjoy.

James 1:21

David, I'm not sure about that, but I am really honored to be on your podcast. I've seen the posts about it. You've got so many great people on it. So I'm I'm I'm honored that I would be in that cohort. Like, wow, this feels like a big deal.

Dave Reddy 1:32

Oh, you you absolutely are, as we like to say, one of the top 200 B2B tech influencers out there. Woo!

James 1:37

Okay, that's I I will try not to forget the little people. You know, that's that's my goal. I don't want to forget the little people.

Dave Reddy 1:43

Yeah, we we we we can't deal with anyone between 201 and 300, but the top 200 were good. So where'd you grow up, James?

James 1:50

Yeah, I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. And the wonderful thing about living in St. Louis is that, of course, now I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. And that the, you know, St. Louis is a wonderful, it's a great place. It's a family town, great for baseball, Bratwurst, and and you know, St. Louis is like life is tangible there. In California, life is like shades of gray. Everyone's here to reinvent themselves. And in St. Louis, people know who they are, they've got brick homes, they take care of their brick homes. California, we don't know what's going on.

Dave Reddy 2:19

You know, as a transplant myself from New England, I gotta tell you that that is that that pretty much nails it. I mean, uh, we we are we are all here to reinvent ourselves. On a day, I think. Exactly. What did mom and dad do?

James 2:32

You know, interesting parents. My father, God bless him, was an engineer. He dealt a lot with uh he invented things and designed things. He was a relentless designer. We'd sometimes be at the kitchen table after dinner, like drawing things out on paper and napkin, and it's like he was very intense about it. And he did a lot with fiber optics, which is actually coming up now in data centers, believe it or not, as as things move around by fiber as opposed to so that was him. He was more of an island kind of a guy. He kept to himself, he he worked and he was a great provider and a great father. My mother, on the other hand, who is a who is a still with us, God bless her, still driving, still having friends over for wine. She's living the good life in St. Louis. He's a very social person. So when she to this day, we'll go to a restaurant with her in St. Louis and we'll go like, Mrs. McGuire is here, and all the bus boys, the waiters want to talk with her, the people at the grocery stores, they know her, they want to talk with her. She could probably run for mayor of St. Louis and win. I'm not sure. So the two of them were opposites, they're married for decades, and uh now it's just her. God bless her. Yeah, maybe you seem to be a little bit of a combination of the two.

Dave Reddy 3:36

You're you're a Garius nerd. I I have hoped I I would be honored to live up to either one of them, actually. So you you mentioned that you studied music at Webster, which is a school in in St. Louis, right?

James 3:50

Right.

Dave Reddy 3:52

Was it a musical family? Were were you the type of folks who sat around, you know, playing instruments together?

James 3:57

No, not really at all. I discovered music later in high school, and I just really fell in love with it. I love the piano. Ended up going to a school in Ohio called Antioch College, which is sort of a very everything goes kind of school, and I thought, why not be a music major? Ended up getting a degree in music composition and theory, which qualified for me to be a waiter after college, of course. That degree in music composition and theory. I hoped that I would be a composer. I did compose a lot of music. With time, I realized that I actually have more talent as a writer than I do as a musician. And early on, the music was closer to my heart. But as I went, I got into my 30s, I realized, you know what, the music, the the writing is just as close to my heart as as the music ever was. And so I when I made the switch really around 40 to be a writer, I thought this is a better I'm I'm just I'm I'm better suited to being a writer than being a musician.

Dave Reddy 4:49

And and what did you write? Were you writing like traditional piano compositions or pop music or some kind of thing?

James 4:54

Yeah, I wrote I wrote everything. I wrote I wrote like pop music, I wrote rock stuff, I wrote jazz stuff, I wrote sort of like contemporary classical stuff. I love to improvise at the piano just endlessly. Okay. I just it's I I love to this day, and I really listen to music as a composer to this day. I listen to like what's going on architecturally, like the chords and the rhythms and the melody, like what's really happening, not like the what they're wearing exactly, but like what's going on inside the music. I really listen to that. I also had a long career after college as an audio engineer, which taught me about production, so I understand like you know, reverb reverb and eQ and those kind of things, and how music is created with multi-tracking. So the the composition background and the multitracking really enabled me to listen to music at a pretty sophisticated level, if I do say so myself.

Dave Reddy 5:39

Sure. We like bragging here on the podcast.

James 5:42

Oh, good, good. Then I'll try I'll try to indulge in a lot of it.

Dave Reddy 5:46

But you made a shift, and and you and you mentioned uh just jumping out of the timeline a bit, you mentioned to me recently you haven't played the piano in a while. Did did did you just have some taste for it?

James 5:56

I'm telling you, no, not at all. And I, you know, when I switched from being really a musician to a writer, I left the piano behind. And I even when we were still in my living room, I kind of like stopped playing. I really threw myself into writing. But I always in the back of my mind, I want to drive over to Emeryville, they've got this Yamaha DGX 660. It's like 800 bucks, and I'm thinking, you know, maybe this Saturday I'll go over there and get it, but I don't. So I don't know. I I long for the piano. I I I read I listen to YouTube videos with without the the transcription, and I I read along with the transcript transcribed music. It's still in the future. Piano's coming back to me one of these years.

Dave Reddy 6:32

Yeah. So if you don't write on the piano, what are you? Are you writing on guitar? Are you using the piano?

James 6:36

No, I I do not write the I don't write music these days. I guess when I say write it, I mean writing words, writing English language. I should be clear about that.

Dave Reddy 6:43

I got you.

James 6:43

Yeah, yeah. No, I had more talent as a writer of the English language than I did as a musician and a music composer. I should be clear about that. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Reddy 6:50

Gotcha. I gotcha. I yeah, yeah. Well, you know, did you write lyrics too? I did. I did write lyrics, all kinds of lyrics, and you know, it's like God, God love it. Is there is there a James McGuire greatest hits out there that we there is an album, believe it?

James 7:04

I put out an album of songs, and like six of the songs were in the Blueberry Hill Songwriters Contest, which is a local St. Louis contest, like we're like they're the top. So is I was locally recognized as a songwriter. Yes.

Dave Reddy 7:16

That's really cool.

James 7:17

Quincy Jones never did call me before he passed.

Dave Reddy 7:20

Well, you know, you know, we like like you know, but but you are one of the top 200 B2B tech influencers. So they're there. You go. There you go. So you you you were that was an Antioch that you made the switch to Webster and you changed your major altogether, or in that case, your your graduate work.

James 7:35

Yeah, I did. I I I ran out of school, I got the degree in composition, music composition and theory. I went to work as a recording engineer, waited tables for a while, then got like a job as a recording engineer, didn't know anything about it, kind of worked my way up, got coffee for people, shoveled snow, finally started recording voiceovers for clients, that is. And was working that I realized I need to kind of make a change. And so I saw this thing called the internet, it was developing, and they said it was going to be big. I had an AOL account, which is a pretty advanced thing to have at the time. My address was jammag at AOL.com. Um there are still people in St. Louis who call me Jam Mag as a nickname for that for that reason. Uh-huh. And uh so I got my master's degree at night while I was about audio engineering during the day in uh in interactive communications to study of the internet. And we're talking like mid-late 90s. So every most of what I learned became obsolete, and yet I did pay very close attention to what was going on from the internet from a very early period.

Dave Reddy 8:32

You know, I ask everybody our age this question. Yes, can you explain to people who are not our age what it's like to have lived a decent portion of your life without the internet?

James 8:45

It it is so beautiful. It is so beautiful. I mean, I I have been like a you know incurable reader since I was able to read. And so I would like, you know, in the summer we'd spend the day at the pool. I would come home and devour John Steinbeck novels because there wasn't there was no internet. I watched a lot of bad television, I can tell you all the plots of Gilligan's Island. Oh, right, man. Yeah. Oh god. Oh, really a microcosm for American society. And so it was I I really am so happy that I had a big chunk of my life pre-internet. It was quieter, you could think and you could read, and it was just kind of nice. Yeah. There are days. There are days.

Dave Reddy 9:27

As addicted as I am to the internet and my phone, which is sitting in front of me beeping.

James 9:31

Oh, totally, totally. I'm I'm I'm as addicted as as well. I can speak highly of the phone. I mean, I know it gets a lot of shade thrown at it, but we stay better informed, I hope. I know we also consume a lot of mental junk food on our phones. There's no doubt. But I I think I know more what's going on out there because of my phone and with the internet.

Dave Reddy 9:49

Yeah. Sure. Well, I mean, I just look at it as an out-of-town sports fan. I still root for Boston sports teams, and I first moved out here in '93, and the internet was in its infancy, and we certainly didn't have phones. Right. You know, I I can remember going to pay phones to find out what the score of the Red Sox game was, you know. Wow. Okay. You all right you know, back in the day, right? You know, and now it's like, you know, phone, boom, we can watch it. You know, I mean, it's just really it's, you know.

James 10:14

Well, one last thought about that. It is so amazing. I never get totally jaded. Like when I go to the front page of the New York Times, and obviously it's a newspaper, but in the middle of the newspaper, there's a video, and I'm trying to explain that to someone from the 1930s. Someday there's going to be a video, there's going to be a movie screen in front of your in the middle of your newspaper. It's pretty much like rocket ships and jetpacks, you know?

Dave Reddy 10:35

It really is. It's, you know, it there's uh like the whole notion of like going to the moon, like no one believed it could happen until it happened. And you know, now it's like, oh, we're going to the back of the moon, whatever. Right. Right. So you were to your point about the the written word, you you wrote some books. You wrote some pretty cool books that I am putting on my reading list this summer. One about Sellerson, right? Who, for those who are a little bit younger, was a famous TV personality, uh, perhaps best known as the person who brought the Beatles to the United States, at least on television.

James 11:08

Right.

Dave Reddy 11:08

And whose theater is still used, I think to this day, by the departing Stephen Kulner and previously Dave Letterman. Right, right. And then you also wrote a book. This is cool, because I the the this has always fascinated me about the national spelling.

James 11:25

Those are two very disparate topics. How did how did you choose those? Well, I'll tell you the thing I found really fascinating is American culture and all the all the little microcosms and subcults in the American culture. Sulva's life really echoed America during all those years that he ran the show because he always had the hottest acts on. And the show ran from late 1940s to the early 70s. And every single week was, in a sense, a time capsule of that week that was going on in terms of the culture, entertainment, music, even sports figures he live on, opera, I mean comedians. So it really it's a it's a picture of America. Same thing with the spelling bee, those kids that are you know all around the country that are that are hustling and practicing every day to win at the spelling bee. There's something particularly American about that.

Dave Reddy 12:07

Yes.

James 12:08

So they both they are disparate topics, but they're united at some level. And they're both really great stories.

Dave Reddy 12:14

Are you working on a book now or or like the piano? Have you put that down?

James 12:17

No, I'm actually working on a on a novel at this point. I've been you know scri scribble scribbling away for a while. I'm I'm threatening to finish it this spring summer. Famous last words. And of course, one can't get ever really get a novel finished, so I'm working on it with this sort of sense of doom. But I I plan on finishing it anyways, and uh because the narrative nonfiction made me realize that the narrow narrative part really called me. And I thought, you know, if if you like stories, then go ahead and write your own, which I which I've done.

Dave Reddy 12:46

Good for you. I look forward to reading.

James 12:48

Yeah, yeah, you you'll need to read it, Dave. Go ahead.

Dave Reddy 12:51

Yeah, as a as a as a guy who dabbles in writing myself, I'm sure you haven't figured out exactly what the plot is until it's out, right? Well, that's true too.

James 12:58

Yeah.

Dave Reddy 12:59

Now you you also you you did some I'm a big John Stewart fan, so you on you were actually on his show, which is really cool. Which book were you promoting on that one?

James 13:08

I'm uh I I promoted the the spelling bee book, but apparently he liked the book, go Go Figure. And the woman who bought it for the publishing house had had an had sort of an inn with him, and so they were able to pitch Stewart and he liked the book. And I tell you two things about that experience. One, I think going on his show is literally the most nervous I've ever been in my entire life.

Dave Reddy 13:29

Really?

James 13:29

You don't strike me as a guy who gets nervous, but oh and I I definitely do, and then going in the Stewart show is like, oh God, the Jon Stewart show. I oh boy. And I showed up that day in Manhattan, the studio, and I had to go around to the side, there was a green room entrance, and had to walk around this block. The line waiting to get in was like a block and a half long. I thought, oh no, all those people are gonna be staring at me, like, oh geez. So but I yeah, the thing is, he was very nice. He came to the green room beforehand and we had a chat, and he was like really kind of very nice to me. And he also, when I was actually there on the on set, I felt like I could strongly feel that if I fell, he would catch me. I thought, you know what, you're nervous, you're afraid, just do your best, and he can somehow catch me. And also his producer to me said to me ahead of time, don't try to be funny, that's John's job. I mean, these politicians come to the show with jokes in their pocket, they fail. Don't even try to be funny, let John be funny. And so it was it worked out.

Dave Reddy 14:27

Well, that must have been uh that must have been cool. I again I'm a big fan. My my wife and I uh used to watch it religiously when he was on five, four nights a week. Right.

James 14:37

Not so much now, but no, he was a bigger deal in the first go-round for whatever reason.

Dave Reddy 14:41

Well, I I mean, I for me it's one of the reasons I only read historical nonf well, not historical nonfiction, but not non-contemporary nonfiction or subjects that are non-contemporary. I I really don't want to be reading about anything that's going on right now, and nor do I want to be watching television that's talking about anything that's going on right now. Oh, interesting. I have to stay sane.

James 15:04

So that means you don't watch like sort of current events television necessarily.

Dave Reddy 15:08

I try to avoid that, like the play I guess.

James 15:10

Yeah.

Dave Reddy 15:11

Okay. Interesting. So let's get into the the tech andor publishing point of view. You talked about that you you worked as an audio engineer. In 2006, you ended up at Quinn Street. Right. I don't know if people outside of publishing know what Quinn Street is. Can you describe what it is and what were you doing?

James 15:25

Well, well, back in 06, it was still owned by a company called internet.com. There was a swashbuckling uh entrepreneur who had bought the domain name internet.com for I think $250,000 sometime in the 90s. He built a business or my like a news and a news analysis business. It went public, zoomed forward, and then it crashed to earth. And so when I started in 06 full-time, I was a managing editor of Datamation. And uh, but they we got sold to Quinn Street, I think it was actually 2012.

Dave Reddy 15:55

Oh, okay.

James 15:55

Yeah, so it's gonna be a little bit veg, yeah. So it's like so I had there was it was a long run there at for internet.com and then and then Quinn Street picked us up. I'm not leaving out a company, are this? Like it was a lot of look, we we got bought and sold away. Well, it's it's close enough. Uh and the funny thing about getting the job, I was the managing editor of Datamation for internet.com. Yeah, I had I had freelanced for like five years, freelance writer. I had written for Datamation. They one time called me up and they said, like, well, do you want to be an editor for the site because your copy is so clean, we don't need to edit it. Because I was obsessive about turning in a really clean copy because I thought that all the other freelancers did. When they finally hired me and I became an editor, I realized, oh no, freelancers don't turn in clean copy at all. That's how I got hired as a managing editor because my copy was so clean. When they first offered me the job, I went and looked at the site, Data Mation. I actually was freelancing for another one of their properties called e-commerce god. So I didn't know anything about datamation. They offered me the job. I went to Datamation and I thought, oh, it's about data centers? What are those? And I realized that they were covering routers. I thought, routers, man, that sounds boring. I don't I my eyes said, I got, and then and then I realized they're gonna send me a check every two weeks, direct deposit. I thought, oh, you know, I better do this.

Dave Reddy 17:11

Routers sound real exciting when you're getting paid for them.

James 17:14

Exactly. So it's astounding and shocking, and and whatever the word is, the amount that I've learned about data center over the last 20 years, I actually know what they are. And I there's no one in my life who wants to really hear about them except for my my tech friends. Otherwise, like, please don't talk to me about data centers and and and everything else. One last thing I know, and only now when the world is AI, am I covering something that's sexy beyond my job?

Dave Reddy 17:38

Up until the internet, all of a sudden we're interesting at c at cocktail parties, right?

Speaker 17:42

Exactly. Even like cloud computing bored the hell out of people. And for years, like cloud, it was like, yeah, we get it. We don't want to hear about it. AI is like, oh no, you cover AI, like, oh, okay. That's a separate thing now.

Dave Reddy 17:53

So that's a really varied trajectory. I do run across that a lot on the show, but yours is so we go from music to the internet to writing books about American culture to tech.

Speaker 18:12

And and the reason why it's so varied is this, Dave, is that if you grow up and you realize I'm just basically a kind of a creative dreamer, there's no job for me. Like, what's the job for a creative dreamer? There's no job for me. So I had to just, oh, that that's gonna pay me, I'll do that. That's gonna pay me, I'll do that. It's like if they had a job called Creative Dreamer, I think I would do it, I would apply for it. But otherwise, like, what do you do?

Dave Reddy 18:34

I gotta tell you, man, that's one of the more philosophical things anyone has ever said in the show. Not that this is a show about philosophy. Uh that's pretty cool. I like that. I'm bullied with that myself. Creative dreamer. Good. So 2012, which isn't that long ago, but it seems like long ago. Right. You decided to do this crazy thing called video. Right. I know these days, um, you know, look, they're giving me a podcast, so everybody's doing audio and video. Right. Right. But back in 2012, that wasn't such a no-brainer. So, what was the decision that you and the folks at Queen Street and so forth decided to make to do that?

Speaker 19:11

Yeah, now the nice thing is, you know, I ran Datamission was my fiefdom at that point. I really ran it with very little interference from management at that point. And I got really excited about interviewing executives over the internet using video, which was a pretty rare bird in those days. And you could kind of, you know, it was physically possible, but it wasn't that commonly done. And I thought, you know, how interesting to do that. And maybe I didn't get enough attention at home as a child, I don't know. But for some reason I wanted to be in front of a video camera. And so I started doing it, and I used uh Google Hangout software, which is like horrible and it was glitchy. And there was even a CTO of a major technology company that could not figure out how to log, figure out how to log on. It was that bad. It would, it would go down in the middle of the of the broadcast, but still I kept at it. I was I was horrible. And so I kept doing it. And about six months in, a colleague said to mine, he was on the marketing side, he said, like, well, do you want to sell those to clients? And you know, I had seen the steady. First of all, I said yes because I thought it was interesting, but second of all, I'd seen the steady drip of layoffs, which had begun years before. I thought, yes, something that produces revenue, I see a modicum of job security here. The answer is yes. So we started selling them to clients. I did a zillion of them to many companies who were household names. I won't mention them, but you would know them if I had heard them. And we would show up. One interesting thing about that is that we would show up to this meeting with this large technology company, me and my colleague and the tech company, and they would not really know what they wanted to say. And I'm thinking, wow, you're you're a big-time tech company, you don't know how to put all this in words. And no, we have this product or solution we want to pitch, or but we we were this we want to talk about something. We don't know how to talk about it. So I ended up actually writing the script for the things and kind of shaping the message and like figuring out well, you want to do some training and education first, and then you can get to the payload later. You might talk to the future at the end. So I was doing a lot of work on screen, but really the biggest work was in sometimes behind the screens, you know, kind of shaping the message. So I realized my I did like countless of those, and just I made my employer like vast sums of money. And sometimes there were like lead gen deals attached to it. So I thought, huh, there's money in this. That's funny how that works. Okay. There may be a plot thread that gets picked up later. I don't know, on that on that idea.

Dave Reddy 21:34

Well, and and again, of course, I mean, we I think going back to our conversation about internet and ADHD, I I think there's a reason, other than the fact that it's gotten easier, which is a big reason and less expensive, but also a big reason. Right. I think there's a reason video is bigger than it ever used to be, because it's easier as a reporter, it's easier as a consumer to shoot or watch something than it's. Is to sit down and write. And I say this as a guy who, like you, although I don't do it as much as I ever used to, loves to write.

Speaker 22:07

Yeah.

Dave Reddy 22:08

This is easier.

Speaker 22:09

Well, I I think also the the the the video clip, the short video clip is the dominant media form of our era, no doubt. Like in the 1600s, it was oil painting. You know, in in the 60s it was rock and roll. Now now it is the short video clip. That is the dominant media format. I mean, we we've all gone doom scrolling on on the on the phone, right? You know? Oh no, I I love I love the the the dance series on TikTok. I like the kitties and doggies. I mean, I I'm not above any of it. I love I love a short video.

Dave Reddy 22:38

You know, I mean so, like our last guest, you were Chris Primesberger. You were an editor-in-chief at eWeek. You started that in 2020, which was all, I think at that point, part of the Quinn Street brand. Right, it was. It was Queen Street. Now, Chris had mentioned on our last show that at its apex, eWeek was 40 odd reporters. I think by the time you got no fault of your own, that was no case. Yes. Pretty much you and a few freelancers, right?

Speaker 23:04

Yeah, I mean, we had a variety of resources. I mean, there were re there were resources within the team that was embedded, and the freelance budget went up and down, but it was sometimes quite quite decent. But I know that e week in its heyday was you know, four e reporters, it was a powerhouse. I mean, like that I saw some of the historic page view numbers. It was a monster back in its day. It was not the monster, quite that level of monster. Good publication.

Speaker 3 23:30

Right.

Speaker 23:31

Never want to show, never want to throw shade at my glorious former employer who, you know, God love them. But it wasn't as big as it had been in its heyday.

Dave Reddy 23:39

Yeah. Well, I and you know, that was I that was back in the day when you'd walk into a Barnes and Noble and, you know, there'd be 500 computer magazines that are other people phone book thick.

Speaker 23:49

And and and one note on that, you know, I we even when I started at Datamation, I mean the budget was plush. It was a freelance budget into five figures. And I even in 06, I saw that slowly fall down. I ran into an earlier because Datamation was founded in 1957. And so I talked with some of the earlier editors. One guy from the 80s told me that they needed a photo with someone jumping out of a plane for an article, so they actually hired the whole thing and the hair eye photographer and someone to jump out of a plane for a photo for an article. That was how rich Datamation had been in say day. I'm not even sure I believe that, but he did tell me that story. So there's been a steady decline year after year of B2B tech journalism.

Dave Reddy 24:31

That said, you have successfully started your own title. Yes, yes. So tell us about Tech Voices, which you started last March. Correct. Why'd you decide to go out and do that? I not necessarily, I don't know if it was on your own or with others, but why did you decide to go out and do that? What's its mission? And why do you think you're you're cooking this strong one year out?

Speaker 24:52

Yeah, you know, I I really always wanted to be on my own. And so I worked for the man as long as I could, but when finally the mass layoff said, No, James, you're free now. You're you're a free man in paradise. I thought, well, okay. If you're a free man in paradise, what do you want to do? So I gave it some thought and I sat down and and and lo and behold, I launched Tech Voices. Tech Voices is very much a work in progress. I mean, some things, I mean, I don't know if the New York Public Library is quite the work in progress that I am necessarily, but I, you know, that's it's okay. I have less volumes than they do, but they're they're good. Um the uh first of all, there's there's there's this there's a dual video track that I do editorial video videos. I also do sponsored videos, kind of trying to try to keep the lights on. You know, and I I was in San Francisco last night. I was meeting a friend for dinner, and I saw this sign. There was an event being held in in Soma, and the event was called AI, Power in the Future of Democracy. And I looked in, I saw a bunch of like techie business people, and I thought, why was I not invited to this event?

Speaker 3 25:55

Right.

Speaker 25:55

So I walked in very politely, just and I said, you know, I said, hi, I'm just this is a great, I'm not invited, I realize, but I just want to check like, you know, who's who's organizing this? And and I said, and the lady came out, and it turns out she was a PR person that we that she that I knew. She said, Oh, I've pitched you a hundred times. Hi, I'm glad you're here. We didn't invite reporters to this, but um I'll I'll invite you to the future. I'm sorry you weren't here. And by the way, David, David Plough, the Obama advisor, David Plough was speaking. Yeah, and it was a great event. Okay. No, it's a very cool event. I thought, and I thought to myself, in a way, that's my ultimate dream, Protect Voices, is to do work that really creates a conversation about things that matter in technology. Funny thing, I was on a panel a couple weeks back and I talked about how one of the undercovers, undercovered stories about technology is how we ourselves can survive it and stay healthy in the face of AI. And of all the things I said that night, that was the one thing that resonated with people. People came up to me afterwards and said, Oh, yeah, like you said that about staying healthy. We we get that. Like that. That's the thing they wanted to hear more about.

Speaker 3 26:56

Yeah.

Speaker 26:56

So at this point, I'm trying to you know rub a few dollars together and keep the hosting bill paid, but I have dreams of of doing higher and better work.

Speaker 3 27:05

Okay.

Dave Reddy 27:06

We we we talked offline about that that mix, and I I talk about it often with guests and with clients about this evolving mix, and it doesn't seem to stop evolving, of editorial and and sponsored content. And yeah, I you know, I used to be a total snob as a PR guy. There were ten years ago, if you you said, hey, uh, you know, we can do this as a sponsored thing, I'd hang up on you. Right. But that's that's silly these days for a lot of reasons. And I mean, at the end of the day, as a guy who's been in journalism for a while, I mean, just the economics have changed. And and you know, do you think that this mix of editorial and sponsored is is it the fix to the problem that we no longer have tire ads and and and and and classified, or is it a fix?

Speaker 27:57

It is certainly one of the key fixes. And I've I've seen, I mean, really, if I go back in time to 06 when I started as a managing editor of data mission, the layoffs happened really every six months, pretty much the entire 20 years. There was actually a heyday during COVID, oddly enough, because online media media did well in COVID. I don't know. And then once, yeah, it was, I mean, there were tragic times, but there was a a little bubble that existed in in that time. And but the the resources have been drained away and drained away. And the question, because all sorts of reasons, we've we don't need to get into the whole library reasons for that. One of the fact is banner ads no longer pay the way they did a long time ago. And also sometimes B2B journalism is not perceived as being as close to the buying decision as some people like, and so it's like it doesn't get the dollars. That's arguable, but anyways, so the question with a few clients.

Dave Reddy 28:47

Yep.

Speaker 28:48

Pardon me?

Dave Reddy 28:49

I've had that discussion with a few clients, yes.

Speaker 28:50

Yes, I'm sure you have. And so the question is, how do journalists get paid? And it seems like sponsorship is a good thing. And and one of the funny things or ironic things about the sponsor stuff is that I do pure editorial stuff and I do sponsor stuff, and the questions end up being surprisingly the same. And I also find that the sponsored question people really don't, believe it or not, really do not want me to come on and go, well, just tell me how great you are right now. You are so great. Like just tell me how great you are. Like they don't even want that, they actually want they want an editorial interview, but someone's gotta like show up and record it and edit the video and post it and all that costs money. And like, who's gonna pay for that? It's just harder.

Dave Reddy 29:34

And and what I I'm glad to hear you say that, and I and I know you believe that because I we've worked together many times. But sure. What what I tell clients who are sort of like, well, how much control do we have? It's like you're gonna have, you know, if you're doing something sponsored with with the right person with the right ROI, you're gonna have a reasonable amount of control. That said, take their counsel because if you put together an ad, you're gonna get X number of views. If you work with this person to tell a great story, you're gonna get 10x, maybe a hundred X number of views.

Speaker 30:06

You know, it is definitely one of the key points about that. And I always tell people, you know, put some educational stuff up front at least. And the reality is the more you can really present yourself as a thought leader, the more you enchant the audience. Because when the audience begins to realize it's an ad, they begin to turn out. So it's like I I I endeavor, I secretly endeavor to keep that trend stuff going as long as I can because it actually really helps the client more because the audience stays uh stays more involved.

Dave Reddy 30:37

I had a friend in college, and this is going way back, well, obviously because it's college, but I had a friend in college that the medium I'm about to speak of who was fascinated by infomercials. Uh-huh. Didn't necessarily buy the stuff, but he found the medium. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Right. And the reason that that's notable is that most of us were like, infomercials. Please, can we turn the channel? But this guy loved it. So yeah, you want to make infomercials, go for it. I don't know how many people are going to watch it. I'm speaking to my clients, not necessarily to you. You spoke about that great AI event last night. And you spoke earlier about the fact that all of a sudden what you talk about is sexy for the first time in your life. Right, right. You and I'd say rightfully pivoted e week in its focus to AI, as many smart magazines did. It's certainly a focus of tech voices. Right. What's your going back to what you you know what we talked about with the the event you went to last night or walked into last night, snuck into. What's your sense of AI as a force in the tech world? Is it is it good? Is it bad? And yeah, I'm sure it's gonna be you're gonna say it's a mixture of both, most people do. If if that's the case, how do we make it good?

Speaker 31:58

Right, right. And and I think I'm I'm not gonna say anything new if I say that there are some dark clouds looming. I mean, I think even to this day, I'm not sure people fully understand the idea of some of the job losses. And I I in my in my darker moments, I wonder, would there even be some social unrest based on the job losses? Hmm, not sure about that, but it's it's certainly possible.

Dave Reddy 32:18

There's already social unrest, right?

Speaker 32:20

So yeah, well, there already is social unrest. You know, it I think it's gonna certainly help the few. I mean, like drug discovery is gonna be fantastic. So I mean, for it it may actually exacerbate the the problem between the have and the have nots. That's gonna be a problem.

Dave Reddy 32:34

Tech usually does.

Speaker 32:35

Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to find something that uh obviously it's it's gonna help us so much. It's also gonna cause a lot of problems. I think at its best, and I think it it makes me better, actually, because I I use chat, first of all, as an informal advisor. I think a lot of us do. I ask a question about the business, like the tech voices business. Do I do this or do I do the newsletter? And chat will give me surprisingly smart answer. Oh, yeah, I chat is my is a fantastic.

Speaker 1 33:02

I'm sorry to interrupt, you're using it both as a journalist and as a businessman.

Speaker 33:05

Absolutely. No, chat has given me pages of advice that I've not yet been able to take care of, like take advantage of. Like, do this and do that, and you're you're doing this. I I tell them what I tell it what I'm doing. It says, actually, you're doing this wrong. You need to be doing this. I thought, really? Okay, it explains to me why. And I know that chat is not sentient, but it certainly imitates sentience to a remarkable degree. So I I am better off because AI exists. I am doing better work. I use it as into the journalistic thing. I use it to research companies, tell me about X Company, and it really gives me a portrait that I could find with a Google search, it would take me like another half hour to do. I can run an article through it and say what's right or wrong about this article. It'll give me feedback. I might catch a typo here or that's because it becomes an extra editor. So it's pretty wonderful in many ways. It can make many of us better. So I mean, I I would hope the people that I hope there's some way the society finds the fact that it does increase us, our productivity, to help everyone get more jobs and do better and more meaningful jobs. Well that whether that'll actually happen, I'm not sure, but I it is it is a wonderful tool.

Dave Reddy 34:14

You've been in tech now for 20 years. Correct. Right. And this I I I think we would both agree from both a journalism perspective and a technology perspective, and that just maybe a world perspective, AI is right up there with the internet as like the most life-changing thing. Maybe more so, yeah. What are some of the other things in the last two decades that you go that was a watershed moment, either for journalism, for tech, or both?

Speaker 34:41

Yeah. You know, one of the things I was uh recording a video discussion with two uh experts about five years ago. And it had been it struck me that over the years I've been covering tech that it has gotten more and more complicated, progressively more complicated. And I said to those two guys after we were done, I said, you know, can I just ask you, like, is it getting more complicated or is it just me? And I said, Oh no, no, it's getting way more complicated. This was far before AI. And I think the nature of technology has gotten heinously complicated over time. It's more like a gradual accretion as opposed to one milestone. Sometimes I think the technology might just collapse of its own complexity. You just never know. Watersheds, obviously, America has turned into a pluralistic society, and that's just a big I mean that's not technology, of course. And technology is has its own form of pluralism, which is really interesting. That I think is is is a world-changing event. Gosh. What what do you think, David? Tell them tell me I'm also on your part. This thing.

Dave Reddy 35:40

I'm showing for those who obviously see us because we're not, we're not, we don't show video. I am showing my iPhone. Yeah. And I'm like, I'm I'm I'm Larry David in that regard, if you remember the ad. I I was at CES in 2007 when they announced this thing, which they did not do at CES. And a buddy of mine who lived in Vegas, he said to me, What do you think about Apple getting into the phone business? And my response was, what the hell are they doing getting into the phone business? Right, right. This is why I do public relations instead of biggest. Yeah. So I always feel I always like to finish with a nice light question. Yeah. Very curious for you, given how you uh opened the podcast on your soliloquy on both cities.

unknown 36:25

Yeah.

Dave Reddy 36:26

San Francisco or St. Louis?

Speaker 36:28

Huh. Well, I guess it all depends what you want to do. I mean, if you want to raise a family, you might be better off at St. Louis because you can still afford to do it. If you want to walk down the street and see some really interesting cool things, maybe SF would be the better town for you.

Dave Reddy 36:44

Or uncool things, as it were.

Speaker 36:46

Or uncool things. Indeed. I mean, San Francisco strikes me as sometimes I'm amazed at how sleepy it can be over in SF. I'll go to like it, I'll see Market Street around 5 30 p.m. on a weeknight, and it's like I'll look up and down Market Street and I'm thinking there's not that much traffic here. I remember like 2018, 2019, it was a busy thoroughfare. Yeah. The city has gotten pretty sleepy. It's sleepy. It's pleasant. And it's still, I think it's still coming back from COVID, even after all these years.

Dave Reddy 37:13

Absolutely. Yeah. And and I and I I I do think unfortunately it's no matter where you stand on the political spectrum, it's just not as safe as it used to be. So going up, I don't think a lot of people go up there like they used to. Right. Right. It's a factor. I've never been to St. Louis, so I can't say. It's one of the few large cities in America that I somehow haven't made my my way to. Yeah.

Speaker 37:33

But I'm still a Cape Cotter at heart, so the the the baked raviolis are fantastic there, as is the Bratwurst. I can stand behind both. Absolutely. Soul food. Yeah, soul food for Germans and Italians. Who knew? Yeah, really.

Dave Reddy 37:48

The Gateway City. It's funny to think that that used to be the West. True. Yeah. Well, James, this was a lot of fun. Very informative and really cool stories. You're definitely one of the more uh Renaissance men we've ever had on. Than the keynote the novels and of course the chat. Sure, right. Thanks so much for joining us. Really, really had a lot of fun. I appreciate it.

Speaker 38:09

Dave has been fantastic. Thank you so much.

Dave Reddy 38:11

I'd like to thank you all for listening today, and once again a big thank you to James McGuire of Tech Voices. Don't forget to join us next month when we chat with yet another member of the B2B Tech Top 200. In the meantime, if you've got feedback on today's podcast, or if you'd like to learn more about Big Valley marketing and how we identify the B2B Tech Top Two Hundred, be sure to drop me an email at d ready at bigvalley.co. That's D-R-E Double D Y at Big Valley, all one word.co. No app. You can also email the whole team at pressing matters at bigvalley.co. Once again, thanks for listening.

Speaker 1 38:47

And as always, think big.