My strategy for sampling the wave of new communications and collaboration tools, thought leaders and brands is to hit the Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco next week. I could have kicked myself down Lombard Street for missing last year’s event: the selection of demos, panels and personalities was second to none. This year’s event looks to be even better.

A killer group of analysts, media and other influencers plan to converge on this event. You can get a glimpse of Amy Wohl’s checklist at her SaaS blog, “Bombarded by Innovation”. Jonathan Eunice offers another candid analyst viewpoint at the Illuminata blog, “Out and About: Reinventing Office in September”. You can find the complete list of analysts here.

My mission — aside from filling the gaps in my own toolbox — is to understand how new enterprise office technologies can transform the way we market, deliver and consume industry research. Likewise, I’ll be looking at how these technologies can redefine an analyst relations backoffice. I suspect at least a small subset can have a positive impact on the frontoffice, too.

A few readers have asked me what the IT analysts are saying about the Long Tail. After failing to convince them that the long tail is (a) anything written by Thomas Hardy or (b) an equally obscure pun involving a parrot, it occurred to me that the most appropriate answer to their questions could be found in analyst blogs. And, I happen to have addresses for a few of those.

Here’s a very small start on what analysts have been saying about the long tail. I’ll update periodically through the end of the year. You’re welcome to add, comment.

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As professional opinion leaders and market experts, industry analysts face three key challenges as bloggers: credibility, relevance and passion. Tekrati explores these challenges and how different analyst groups address them, as we continue this special report on industry analyst blogs. Related stories offer in-depth comments from selected analysts, and a reading list that links directly to analyst commentary on blogs and RSS.
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Five industry analysts speak candidly about their blogs — past, present and future — in this supplement to Tekrati’s Special Report: The State of Analyst Weblogs.

Why did you start your blog?

Carl Howe, Blackfriars blog: We started our blog because we were commenting on interesting articles and data verbally with our clients, but had no venue to pass on those insights to our broader Internet audience other than a two-page opinion piece. Further, we wanted a way for visitors to our Web site to provide comments and suggestions to us without necessarily sending us email. A blog felt like the ideal solution.

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The high tech industry analysts have been slow to adopt blogs. That’s about to change. In this two-part special report, Tekrati takes the pulse of the industry analyst bloggers. The report supplements the launch of our newest online resource, a directory of industry analyst blogs.

At first glance, the slow spread of analyst blogs seems illogical. We expect the analysts to embrace new technologies. We expect the analysts to embrace tools that can increase their visibility and effectiveness as thought leaders. Where the two intersect — new technologies and new communications channels — we expect to find analyst nirvana. So, why the slow uptake?

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