Carter Lusher announced he is departing HP. Adding to HP’s loss of voice in the AR community, no one will be taking the reigns of the HP Corp AR blog. Instead, it will be discontinued.

The AR community also saw the departure of Jonathan Yarmis from his high profile AR position at Hill & Knowlton, earlier this year.

On the PR/AR blogging front, Jonny Bentwood lamented earlier today about the recent loss of high profile PR bloggers.

I’ll be interested to see who steps up to take the places of these AR statesmen.

Meanwhile, enjoy your time off, gentlemen. And, stay in touch.

Update Nov 12: AMR Research has brought Jonathan onboard as a vp (Tekrati story).

Carter Lusher and the HP Corporate Analyst Relations team have launched a company blog for the worldwide industry analyst community. The new HP Corporate AR blog complements the HP Analyst Relations Portal and other online and offline outreach resources designed expressly for the industry analysts.

The intent is to keep the blog true to the interests and needs of the industry analysts. Other types of opinion and news bloggers — from journos to armchair pundits — continue to be served by the HP media relations group; financial analysts are served by the IR group. Not sure which type of blogger you are — at least in HP’s eyes? See the debut post for some clarification and examples, or contact the team directly.

Part of the intent is to extend a corporate handshake to all analysts, regardless of their “tier” status. That may seem like a small thing, but it is not. Every analyst knows the importance of having responsive, well informed and well placed contacts inside the big tech companies. And, every analyst knows that the big company AR programs often favor “tier 1″ over all others — for private briefings, survey responses, interview requests, informal updates on the state of the business.

Last month, we saw the launch of the Cisco corporate AR blog. This month, it’s the HP Corporate AR blog. Based on the strength of these efforts, blogging is fast becoming a best practice in corporate industry analyst relations.

Sam Whitmore’s Media Survey this week shines its Tech Editorial spotlight on the Gartner Magic Quadrant. The live teleconference takes place tomorrow at 4:00 pm EST, 1:00 pm PST. I’m on the show, along with Carter Lusher, director of analyst relations at HP, and a Gartner spokesperson TBA, and of course, the outspoken Sam Whitmore and his SWMS clients. As usual, this group has compiled an interesting list of questions and discussion points, including which parts of the MQ get the most readership, how do I get my client onto one, how do I get my client off of one.

I characterize the Magic Quadrant as the most reviled form of industry analyst research being published anywhere on the planet today. One of the main reasons it is so deeply hated is that it is so deeply loved. Much of the intense loathing that the MQ evokes is a direct response to its popularity with IT vendors. Check it out:

• The term “magic quadrant” was included in more than 400 press releases distributed through Business Wire during the last 12 months
• Google finds about 757,000 web pages including the words Gartner and “magic quadrant”, and that’s limiting results to web pages first seen within the last 12 months and excluding all results from the gartner.com domain

Everyone’s got an opinion on what to do about Magic Quadrants, especially the analyst relations consultants and those who believe they are AR experts whether or not they have ever actually executed on analyst relations themselves. Gartner analysts are a good case in point. Many Gartner analysts make buckets of cash from the Magic Quadrant long after they leave Gartner employment, by providing MQ training, consulting, project management, insider tips, whitepapers, and related expertise ad nauseum.

We’ll see what opinions pop up tomorrow.

Lots of very smart people like to point out what’s wrong with the industry analyst business. Yet, few engage in a constructive conversation about what it’s going to take to revitalize the industry analyst business — so that it plays a more valuable link in the IT procurement chain going forward. Chanting lies-damn-lies won’t do the trick. To foster a more useful and informed public debate, I’m supporting a new speaker series at the Computer History Museum. Here’s some insight into my thinking, and my personal thank you to some inspiring individuals and organizations also helping to promote this event, albeit each for their own reasons.

To recap the CHM event: The Computer History Museum is presenting Gideon Gartner, in conversation with Neill Brownstein, on May 15th. It’s free; a $10 donation at the door is suggested (if not a CHM member). Find more information and register at the CHM website.

Recently, I surprised James Governor at RedMonk by pointing out that I see many parallels between RedMonk today and Gartner’s early days. If you know him, you can guess just how pleased he was. But here’s my point: as a company, Gartner was a innovator and a disruptor in the industry analyst marketplace in the early 1980s. It changed the rules about information and advisory delivery, sales models, business culture, and more. Gartner was not the only innovative company at the time, nor was it the last. However, many its innovations became standard practices. Most of the analyst companies we see today are interpretations of this earlier period of innovation — despite the fact that as early as 1995, Gideon Gartner himself characterized the 1980s business model as outdated and out of sync with the market.

That, in a nutshell, is why this Computer History Museum speaker series is worthwhile. It provides an opportunity to hear personal insights and stories about a successful cycle of innovation — including the challenges, wins, frustrations. It’s an opportunity to understand the human story behind what it took to disrupt and innovate. What could have been done differently? What will it take to reinvent the analyst business again, today or in the future?

Read the rest of this entry »