Friends, Lend Me Your Eyes

When were you last pushed to your limit? I think a lot about my limits these days, and the margin before those limits are breached, since the pandemic pushed several aspects of my life to the brink. I lost my partner and my home, and my plans for the future were in disarray. Money was so tight that when my water tank sprung a leak I could not afford a replacement, so I turned off the taps for four months. The Risk & Assurance Group (RAG), the nonprofit I have run since 2018, almost went under, so I worked for free and lent it what little I could afford to keep paying other staff. But we are still going, thanks to the generosity and determination of some truly amazing people. It makes me appreciate how fortunate I have been to meet and know them. They say you discover your true friends not when life is going well, but when you need them most. It is because of them that I can now talk about the success we have recently enjoyed.

The Communications Risk Show is the new spearhead for RAG's efforts. Pandemics are really bad for anyone trying to arrange conferences; the hard data shows me there will be a lasting downturn in demand for in-person events aimed at professionals who do not work in sales and do not have big budgets to spend. RAG was created to serve the underdogs and I am reluctant to give up the fight on their behalf. That is why we gambled on reaching the same professional audience using a totally different format: a 13-episode series of web livestreams scheduled to occur at the same time each week. Far more people have watched our shows than we expected. The average audience is well over 2,000 viewers per episode. Many of those viewers are getting information they would never otherwise have received, given to them by leading experts in risk management for the communications industry. And because the shows are live, the audience is still able to put their questions to the experts.

Most businesspeople use social media to pursue profit. There is nothing wrong with that, but I just want your attention. There are four more episodes to go in this season of The Communications Risk Show. A tremendous line-up of guests have agreed to appear in those shows, as pictured above, from left to right: Karsten Nohl , Patrick Donegan , Feng Hao , Sathvik Prasad , Pierce Gorman , Andrew O. (安豪) Wong (黃) and Sarah Delphey . Please watch. If you watch, then I can show our sponsors that their money has been spent wisely. Then we can raise the money needed for a second season of The Communications Risk Show, and to do all the other things that we would like to do, including the return of RAG's in-person events when the time is ripe. If you give one hour of your time per week, for the next four weeks, you will hear from some of the foremost thinkers on the risks faced by the communications industry worldwide, plus some entertaining topical chat between Lee Scargall , Edward Finegold and me. You will also help us to secure the next season of the show, and the future of RAG. I think that is a good deal, and I hope you do too.

The theme of our next show will be 'Security and the Cloud', with Karsten telling us on May 17 about the ways hackers will attack cloud servers used by telcos. Patrick will join us on May 24 to discuss the disruption of communications networks by hostile nations. On May 31 we will get varying perspectives from Sathvik, Feng and Pierce on the problem of illegal robocalls and how to tackle it. The current season will end on June 7 with Sarah and Andrew giving interviews about restoring trust to the identification of callers and exchanging information about scams.

Each stream begins on Wednesdays at 4pm UK time, which was chosen because it is late enough for early risers living in Seattle but not too late to be watched by night owls in Beijing. Watch at tv.commsrisk.com or follow this LinkedIn page to be notified of where the streams will be displayed on LinkedIn.

Subscribe to our broadcast schedule to have the details of every livestream added to your calendar automatically, including the shows we hope to produce for Season 2. But if you miss a live show you will still be able to watch every video recording on demand at tv.commsrisk.com. You can also listen to the audio-only podcast via Spotify or Apple.

Thank you for reading this message. I would have liked to have ended with a list of all the people who deserve thanks for sustaining RAG during the last few difficult years, and for making our current livestreaming show possible. When I started compiling the list, it became evident that it would be too long, and would not reflect how much I appreciate everyone's contributions. I will seek to thank you all in person, though I will never be able to thank you all enough.