When 2016 began, Stacey Higginbotham was a Fortune senior editor covering the Internet of Things. That kind of gig is the top of the mountain for many journalists, but not for Stacey. A month later she became a brand.
Event season is heating up. Gigaom this month will announce the speaker lineup for Gigaom Change, its first F2F event under the leadership of CEO Byron Reese. The New Yorker is also getting into the tech event business with the debut of the New Yorker TechFest, chaired by the widely-respected New Yorker editor David Remnick.
Gigaom Research is back. Veteran Gigaom analysts are returning. New ones are being hired. Here's why you care. The old Gigaom Research was seen primarily as a publishing operation, employing more than 200 freelance writers and analysts. But Gigaom Research also built dozens of consultative relationships. It's this model that has re-emerged.
This has been a big and busy week for Derrick Harris. The attorney and Thai boxer -- also known as tech media's most authoritative big data reporter -- has new roles as "content lead" for the Structure Conference series, which re-emerges in November, and as a senior writer for Fortune covering big data, data analytics and artificial intelligence.
Structure is back -- without Gigaom branding but looking intriguing nonetheless. Led by former Gigaom executive editor Tom Krazit and events VP Clare Ryan, the new Structure event debuts Nov. 18-19 at the Julia Morgan Ballroom in San Francisco.
Gigaom shut down last night. What the hell happened? Gigaom gambled with a brave business model and lost. It hired only proven, expensive talent. It chose not to chase web advertising, opting instead for high-margin paid research and F2F events. Too few businesses bought the research. Gigaom couldn't scale its events overseas. During its final seven months, Gigaom apparently operated without a CEO. Time ran out.
About to start his ninth month on the job as Gigaom enterprise tech reporter, Jonathan Vanian has lots to do. He still is a devops guy. He too follows the money when a Box or New Relic go IPO, but mostly he's looking for a funding round news hook. He keeps a close eye on behemoths such as IBM, Oracle and Google. And in recent weeks, he's kept an even closer eye on cybercrime and cybervandalism.
The strongest event franchise in b-to-b tech has got to be Gigaom Structure. Last week's cloud-focused event sold out at an average ticket price of $1,295 -- $500 more than what VentureBeat got for CloudBeat last September.
UPDATE: Gigaom executive editor Tom Krazit has posted new policies for accepting guest posts. The door remains open for speakers at Gigaom events and for guest authors Gigaom has previously accepted. Gigaom will begin soliciting guest posts from those it respects, Tom says. And he invites experts to pitch directly, without any PR involvement. Gigaom no longer accepts unsolicited guest-post pitches from PR agencies or corporate PR departments.
Ross Rubin is one of those guys who's been hiding in plain sight for more than two decades.
