I'm proud to say that CRM Magazine, the Institutional Investor of the CRM industry, gave me one of their 2008 CRM Influencers awards yesterday. As I stood on the podium around the pool at the Water Cube in Beijing and bowed to get the gold medal and the national anthem played, proud to represent our country, I also shook my head when I realized that last kick kept me from the 200m freestyle world....oh, wait an f--ing minute. Too much of NBC, CBNC and MSNBC and Oxygen these last few days.
Sorry, got off track....or....off lane.
Yep. I was named one of the top influencers in CRM by CRM magazine yesterday along with some illustrious personages.
See, each year CRM Magazine gives out awards for this. They cover the Top Influencers - the consultants, analysts, authors etc. who impact the industry in some way. They also give us cool nicknames to identify how we influence the industry. Mine is now Paul "The Herald" Greenberg, though I was hoping for "The Closer" - Kyra Sedgewick has that one or "The Fixer" but Benjamin Bratt or Bernard Malamud have that one sewed up. So I'm either in the "hark the herald angel sings" realm or I'm one of those guys who toots that long horn and wears funny 14th century duds.
Its a real honor - especially because it comes from Josh Weinberger, Marshall Lager, David Myron and others at CRM Magazine. Its always nice to be recognized by your peers but especially so if you truly like the people recognizing you - and its not just a professional "thing." And I do.
Some of the others (not all, so forgive me those unmentioned) named are:
Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li - "The Swells" - for their incredible work on how social media/social networking works - their book Groundswell.
Bill "The Rock" McDermott - for not only his ability to continue the excellent work of Shai Agassi at SAP but then his capability to blaze his own path
Seth "The Big Thinker" Godin - for his clarity and his ability to not only generate but express big ideas - in a simple way.
AND for the fourth year running my good buddy,
Brad "The Steady" Wilson - General Manager of Microsoft - for his get it done approach and engaging attitude and his ability to nuture and nurse the influencers and general public world while Microsoft Dynamics CRM was evolving.
But influencers was not the only category that the awards were given. There were the 2008 Rising Stars. I'm really pleased to say that nGenera was one of them. If you remember, in a prior blog post in May, I noted that nGenera was an important company because they were the first Web 2.0ish company to acquire a CRMish company - Talisma. But as I found out in subsequent interviews and after reading their materials, they are so much more than that. While their strategy is almost entirely "roll up" - they are focused around a total what could arguably be a CRM 2.0 solution - though still missing the transactional side for that one - with their acquisitions focused not only on the pure customer interaction side a la Talisma but talent management - e.g. internal customers a.k.a employees. The relatively obvious idea is that they are aimed at a complete enterprise ready solution that would essentially provide a collaborative environment between company, customers, and employees to enhance the lives and of course behaviors - e.g. purchasing or work habits - of all the humans involved in the total enterprise - all with the understanding that the customer ecosystem is the ruling environment at the moment - and all on demand. Amazing. AND CRM Magazine recognized them as one of the up and coming companies - rightfully so.
In any case, as Steve Martin said back in his rising star days, I'd like to thank each and every one of you for making this possible. ThankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouThankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouThankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouThankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouThankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouThankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouThankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouThankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouThankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouThankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouThankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouThankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouThankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou
Congratulations, Paul. Well deserved. You've certainly influenced me in CRM but you have a way to go in baseball:-)
Glenn
Posted by: Glenn | August 21, 2008 at 10:55 AM