Jon Swartz, Senior Content Writer, Techstrong Group

In more than three decades covering technology, John Swartz has met a lot of people: engineers, journalists, CEOs, and he's got a story for all of them. As a student at San Jose State, he was part of a newspaper staff that was led by AP's Mike Lidke and included at least a half dozen other pioneers in tech journalism. As a reporter for 17 years at USA Today, he witnessed online advertising's slow but inevitable impact on a once major newspaper. And as a reporter today at TechStrong Group, he's covering AI from a skeptical but hopeful perspective. 

John joined us to tell us about his engineer father's influence on his career, the good old days of tech trades, and just a few of the stories he has about all those people he's met over the years for this episode of Pressing Matters from Big Valley Marketing, the podcast that brings you conversations with the top media and influencers in B2B Tech. I'm Dave Reddy, head of Big Valley Marketing's Media and Influencers practice, and I'm your host. Through research and good old-fashioned relationship building, we've identified B2B Tech's top 200 media and influencers, including John. Here's our chat with John. Enjoy.

Episode Transcript

Dave Reddy (00:00):
In more than three decades covering technology,
John Swartz has met a lot ofpeople engineers, journalists,
CEOs, and he's got a story forall of them.
As a student at San Jose State,he was part of a newspaper
staff that was led by AP's MikeLidke and included at least a
half dozen other pioneers intech journalism.
As a reporter for 17 years atUSA Today, he witnessed online

(00:22):
advertising's slow butinevitable impact on a once
major newspaper.
And as a reporter today atTechStrong Group, he's covering
AI from a skeptical but hopefulperspective.
John joined us to tell us abouthis engineer father's influence
on his career, the good olddays of tech trades, and just a
few of the stories he has aboutall those people he's met over

(00:43):
the years for this episode ofPressing Matters from Big Valley
Marketing, the podcast thatbrings you conversations with
the top media and influencers inB2B Tech.
I'm Dave Reddy, head of BigValley Marketing's Media and
Influencers practice, and I'myour host.
Through research and goodold-fashioned relationship
building, we've identified B2BTech's top 200 media and

(01:04):
influencers, including John.
Here's our chat with John.
Enjoy.
John, thanks so much for uhjoining us on the show.
Really appreciate having you.
Thanks for having me.
So you are, uh per usual, uhspeaking to me from a hotel

(01:27):
room.
I am speaking to you from ahotel room, such as the life of
a PR person and a journalist.
You're in uh Vegas yet again.
So we'll get to the show.

Jon Swartz (01:35):
That's my second home.
Yes.
My second home.
My second home that I that Idread going to, but I am here,
yes.

Dave Reddy (01:44):
Right.
Yeah.
Well, you get to a certain age,right?
I will we'll get into yourtravels in a bit, but I I let's
start with as we typically do.
So you grew up in SiliconValley.
Perhaps you were destined to bea tech journalist.
Where exactly did you grow up?

Jon Swartz (01:58):
So I grew up in uh Almaden Valley, which is on the
border of San Jose and LasGatas.
My dad worked at IBM for 20years.
He worked in the uh Cottle RoadLaboratories.
And he worked there, yeah, heworked there in the 60s and the
70s.
The security was so tight atthis lab that they wouldn't
allow family members into thelab, even when I was like five

(02:18):
years old.
I couldn't go in.
So I to me it was like this bigmystery.
It was like working for the CIAas far as I was concerned.
And my dad traveled all hetraveled all over the world.
He worked on the Winchesterdisk drive uh project.
He was a hardware engineer.
He uh was uh a brilliant guywho was consumed with his job.

(02:39):
And I think, in a sense, hepassed that on to me.
I inherited his his work habit,his worth habits and ethics and
uh his drive.
And I became kind of immersedin my job too.
And uh I he very he had a greathuge influence on me.
I mean, he was exposed to a lotof people back when he was at a

(03:01):
company called Macstore that hestarted.
He had a couple of guys namedSteve come in and ask for some
equipment to be given to themfor free.
And they were both thesehippies, they were Steve Jobs
and Steve Wozniak, and he hegave them the products and he
said, you know, these guys willnever unmount anything.
So again, my dad, you know, hewas he worked at IBM, so maybe

(03:22):
that was part of the reason whyhe didn't see what was going to
happen.
But yeah, I he just passedaway.
He passed away a few monthsago, so it still resonates with
me, but get a huge influence onmy interest in in what goes on
in Silicon Valley.
And I saw it very up close, andI saw through some of these
larger-than-life characters thathe worked with or he interacted

(03:43):
with.

Dave Reddy (03:44):
Well, I'm sorry to hear of his passing, but it
certainly sounds like his legacylives on in you.
I would presume that beingaround him in IBM might have
triggered an interest in tech,or is that more of just being in
Silicon Valley?

Jon Swartz (03:57):
Well, see, one of the things my dad did was uh he
had a we lived in this housewith a two-car garage and he
turned it into a laboratory.
So he had all these electronicdevices, he had a surveillance
camera, he built a dark room inthere because he was a very, he
was a very good, accomplishedphotographer.
So he would be running uh speedtests of the drive, a floppy

(04:19):
drive.
He uh would constantly betinkering with things.
He liked to rebuild engines andcars, he liked to design homes
and build them.
So he did all these things.
And, you know, whether I wantedto or not, he would enlist my
brother and I to help him.
And at certain times I kind ofresented it because I was like
free slave laborer.

(04:39):
He used to joke about this,right?
But I learned a hell of a lotfrom him, like how to lay a
foundation of cement for ahouse, how to work on plumbing
and electricity.
I mean, I have absolutely zeromechanical skills, but through
uh, I don't know, trial anderror, I learned how to do a lot

(05:00):
of this stuff.
And, you know, it he taught mehow to solder, which I think is
there's an art to doing that,and I actually enjoyed doing
that.
But it it was you know, he hehad this kind of romantic
lifestyle to me.
He was always traveling, he wasalways in New York, or he was
in Asia in particular, he was inuh Thailand, Japan, China.

(05:24):
He spent a lot of timecommuting there, and you know,
he just told me these storiesabout what would happen, where
technology was going.
I mean, he had a very good ideaof what the type of world we
would live in, and he wouldshare this with me.
He also loved science fiction,so I'd watch science fiction
films with him.
His favorite film, and actuallyone of mine is uh 2001, and we

(05:45):
saw that together.
He took me to the theater tosee that with my brother.
Wow, it was a double bill, andI'm gonna I I'm ashamed to tell
you this, but it was 2001 and aclockwork orange.
I was like okay, yeah, I meanit was a little over the top,
right?
But that's double Kubrick,right?
It was Kubrick and ClockworkOrange was banned.

(06:06):
I lived in England later and itwas banned there for years, you
know, because of the violenceand the yeah, yeah, yeah, right?
It was like a terrible social,social story.
That's a whole lot of Kubrickin one afternoon.
Yeah, I know.
It was a little much, it's likefive hours.
And my dad, uh, you know, I Isaw that movie with him up until
he died.
I saw I would see that moviewith I saw that movie with him

(06:26):
at light at least 10 times, andI think near the end, he my
father couldn't see, he wasblind basically.
And so he would just listen toit because he loved classical
music, and I would explain tohim sometimes, oh, here's the
scene, but he could hear it.
There were there's not a lot ofdialogue in 2001.
The first 27 minutes of themovie, I believe, there is no

(06:47):
dialogue.
That's right.
The apes, and then and thenthere's the space, the vista of
the space, and the and theclassical score, and it's just
like this opera, and then itthen it devolves into like just
minimal length, minimaldialogue.
And he was my dad was from theMidwest, he was from Kansas, so
he left as soon as he couldbecause he said he didn't want

(07:08):
to be a ditch digger when he wasin his 20s.
So he came out to Californiaand he went to school at San
Jose State in engineering, gothis degree, and never looked
back.
He just wanted to do somethingdifferent, and uh he was a
self-made man, but also becausehe was from the Midwest, he was
a man of few words to mostpeople.
I mean, there the people hetalked to, he would talk to

(07:29):
almost too much.
He loved to talk, but he onlyselected certain people to talk
to because he was kind ofwithdrawn, like some of these
engineers are.
I was gonna say he was in hisown world, right?
He's kind of a little bit onthe spectrum where and if you
couldn't connect with him, thenthere really wasn't much you
could talk with him about.

(07:50):
And I kind of find it thathelps me actually when I
interview people in techindustry because I know how to
get to them.
I think I know how tocommunicate with them on their
level, because for the mostpart, some of these guys, mainly
guys, are hard to uh they'rehard, they're they have a hard
time articulating what they wantto do with rare exception.

(08:11):
This is why I will always havea job.

Dave Reddy (08:13):
Now I'm curious, given your father's your
father's pride and and his longcareer at IBM, he he must have
put together, or you all musthave put together the notion
that Hal was, you know, one letHal H A L was direct from IBM,
Hal is uh IBM, right?

Jon Swartz (08:30):
Off by one letter, right?

Dave Reddy (08:32):
Right.
So for those who've never seen2001, first go watch it.
And uh second, there's an evilcomputer named Hal.
And if you do the if you do theletters, Hal is one letter
removed, H I A B L M from IBM.
So a little bit of a lot ofdifferent things.

Jon Swartz (08:49):
And that's that thought that thought permeated
Silicon Valley for a long time,too.
I mean, that's what createdApple, and I think what created
Microsoft.
That's like the whole story ofSilicon Valley to me, is that
there are these tech behemothsthat are created.
Right.
And they then they they startoff as these noble, like
visionary uh discovery vehicles.

(09:09):
And then they get big, and thenthey become like any major
business.
They become too big and theystart doing things that we
object to.
Like history keeps repeatingitself.
So then what happens is thereare a group of, this is like a
Star Wars movie.
There's like a group that wantto attack the evil empire, so
they create their own company,and then they become big, and

(09:32):
then there's a next wave likeGoogle that comes along to
become the anti-Microsoft, andthey all all end up becoming the
same type of and so we see itthrough different iterations, we
see it through things like theMag 7, Fang.
I heard of something calledMango.
Have you heard that?
Is that's Mango's that's thenew the new the new powerhouse?

(09:53):
So it's Microsoft, Anthropic,Google, Nvidia, and OpenAI.

Dave Reddy (10:00):
OpenAI.
Okay, Mango.
All right.
Well, I I've been I've beensaying Fang and trying to figure
out Fang plus M for a longtime.
So now I will go with PlusFang.
Yes.
That's interesting.
So Apple's no longer.
Okay, whatever.

Jon Swartz (10:12):
Oh, Apple, well, we can talk about Apple.
I I I spend most of my lifewriting about them.
So I, you know, it was likeMisery Loves Company.
And after a while, I just uh upin uh God, it's far back when I
was at USA Today.
We used every Apple event, theywould invite like eight of us
to these things.
And I remember the last severalyears I'd go to it, I would

(10:33):
just say, this is just like aniteration of nothing new.
There's nothing here.
And I just it's it's gonna beinteresting to see where they
go.
We can talk about that later.

Dave Reddy (10:42):
Yeah, yeah, pretty soon actually, because at first
I want to talk about so youyou're a a San a proud San Jose
State Spartan.
I see you and Mike Lickey ofthe AP on Facebook all the time
at all sorts of sporting events,particularly Spartan uh
football.

Jon Swartz (10:54):
We go on trips together.
We we go on we went to uh we'vegone to uh we went to DC to see
San Jose State play Navy, wewent to Miami.
That was a Raiders Dolphinstrip, but we've gone to uh LA
several times to see USC playthem.
I also went to Georgia, by theway.

(11:16):
So I've so I I went to a a reallike SEC powerhouse school,
like a real college footballteam, and then the Spartans,
which are Mike, Mike refers tothe Spartans as like the Oakland
A's of college football.
And I think there's a lot to besaid there.
They're underfunded, they'reunderdogs, which makes them very
appealing.

(11:36):
And I actually was taught, Iactually I talked to Mike quite
a bit.
I've Mike's a huge music fan,so we we go to music events
together, we go to sportingevents together.
I've known each other, he wasmy editor when I was in college
on the school paper.
No kidding.
We've known each other sincethe day.
Is it the spider?
I've known him since I was I'veknown him since 1982, January
1982.

(11:57):
I met him.
I also, you know, the anotherguy who was pretty well known
and who unfortunately passedaway was Tom Quinlan, was part
of that same staff.
He went to the Merck and wasdoing extremely well, and he
abruptly died of a heart attack,I believe in 2000.
He was only in his mid-40s.
He just started a USA Today andI was on the East Coast, so I

(12:17):
got the word through JuliePitta, who was also on that
staff.
She worked at Forbes.
So Julie and I worked togetherat Forbes for a while.
She worked at the LA Times fora while.
She got out of journalism to goin-house and write and you know
raise a family.
But there was uh quite a groupof folks who were all on the
same staff back in 1982 for aschool newspaper.

(12:41):
And you know, several Mike andI stuck it out.
So did Julie.
There were some a few otherpeople, but the you know, in in
this area, back in the early 80sand up through the end of that
decade, the only jobs you reallycould get if you're a reporter
were at a really small paper oryour general assignment, which I

(13:03):
did in Scotts Valley, or youwork at a trade magazine.
So I worked at a place calledMacweek, which people loved.
And I was part of that originalstaff there.
I worked there twice.
I worked there when it firststarted, and uh, in terms of
design, it was an amazing place.
Uh I worked with uh a bunch oftalented people, a lot of people

(13:25):
who used to write for RollingStone worked there.
And then I left to go toEngland, where I worked for the
Independent and wrote for someother places, and I worked at a
trade.
And then I came back and a guynamed Dan Farber, who is the
speechwriter for Mark Benioff,was my editor the second time I
was there.
So I worked off and on therefor like six years until I got a

(13:46):
job with a chronicle.
It was it was a fun ride, buttech tech reporting at trades
was the way you could get a job.
If you could write, you couldget a job at one of these
places.
But then you had to learn onthe fly.
You had to hit the groundrunning.
And it would to me wasoverwhelming, to be honest, for
the first few years.
It was just uh it was a wholenew world.

(14:08):
But you know, that whole tradejournalism route was a path many
people took from places likeInfoWorld, Mac Week, Computer,
uh, what was it, ComputerWeekly, Computer World, I'm
sorry, uh, PC Week.
People like that ended up goingto the mainstream media.

(14:28):
I think Markov was one of them.
He went from the fromInfoWorld, I mentioned it to New
York to the Examiner, Ibelieve, and then to the New
York Times.
I went from Mac Week to theChronicle.
There were a bunch of us,Carolyn Saeed, who was at the
Chronicle for a long time.
I worked with her at Mac Weekfor a long time.
There's this whole pattern thatjust this went on.

(14:50):
It's all very incestuous.
But you know, my but going backto Mike, I mean, Mike is a very
dear friend.
I was just talking to him lastnight.
I I talked to him quite almostall the time.
I just saw him at a Stanfordgame a few weeks ago.
And uh he is a to me, he is,and I've never told him this,
but I think he's the bestdeadline writer, one of the best

(15:13):
I've ever seen.
You gotta be if you're to workat the AP.
Yeah, that's why he works atthe AP.
It's perfect.
I sat next to him at pressconferences where he's not only
writing a story about the pressconference, he's got a second
screen up and he's working on asecond story.

Dave Reddy (15:27):
That's amazing.

Jon Swartz (15:27):
I've never I've never seen that.

Dave Reddy (15:29):
That's a skill you can't teach, I think.
Mike may Mike might tell usotherwise, but my guess is he
was just born with that ability.

Jon Swartz (15:35):
Bill, he worked, he was an intern at the LA Times
and he he was like a sportswriter.
You can ask him this.
He was a sports writer when hewas in high school and he
covered the Dodgers for somesmall paper.
Yeah, that's awesome.

Dave Reddy (15:47):
So back to Mac Week.
So this is something we don'treally have today.
I mean, obviously, I believeMac Week may still exist online,
but the what I know it's gone.

Jon Swartz (15:55):
It's totally gone.
Oh, it's totally changed.
It's so I was there, it startedin the 80s.
It was a guy named DavidEzekel, who just passed away,
unfortunately.
He was a really interestingguy.
He went to Woodstock.
He was at that show.
He's kind of a hippie, he was adeadhead.
He created this publicationwith a guy from Rolling Stone

(16:16):
who I didn't really know thatwell.
And then there was uh thepublisher was uh Michael Chong,
who is in the publishingindustry for a long time.
I think Michael lives in LasVegas now.
They started this idea of likeRolling Stone meets like the
like info world, except it'smore readable.
And they would do celebrityinterviews in a trade magazine.
A lot of they were at thebeginning, you know, to give you

(16:39):
an example, we had two artistswho worked with us uh on special
projects.
One was Peter Max from theYellow Submarine Fame.
Yeah, yeah, and then the otherwas oh, Keith Herring.
Oh no, Keith! Yes, I wish Istill had the shirt.
He made a specially designedshirt for us, and then uh Max
made a poster, and this was withMacweek.

(17:02):
And by the way, Macweek wasconsidered like so kind of under
the radar, quasi-cool, and I II dare say that.
I don't mean to to say it waslike some some great shakes, but
the show Moonlighting, therewas there was a scene where
there's a Mac Week mug.
So if you if you to get aMacweek mug, you had to give us

(17:22):
a great tip for Mac the Knife,which was our gossip column.
So just between us, I used toedit it and I used to help write
it.
So you were it was it was itwas the state, it was like
Spencer Cat at PC Week.
Right.
And so at one episode ofMoonlight, Moonlighting with uh
Bruce uh Willis and what was hername?

(17:44):
Oh gosh, I just went blank onher name.
She's beautiful, yes, exactly.
Simple Shepherd.
They had a close-up ofsomebody's desk with the Mac
Week mug on it during one of theepisodes, and somebody had
probably given given us a tip.
That's the only way they couldhave gotten the mug is through
giving us a tip about Apple.
And the the irony was that thegreatest source of material when

(18:08):
we got tips from Apple was fromApple.
So Jean-Louis Gasset, who usedto be the president of Apple
products, he was like a sieve.
He would like he would justfilter all sorts of shit to us.
And to the point where whenwhen when jobs took over, one I
I've heard this, I'm not sure ifit's true, but he he wanted all

(18:28):
advertising that was associatedwith Apple or anyone closely
associated with Apple cut offfrom MacBook because he was so
pissed off at all the storiesthat we would get.
Like he wanted to kill the hewanted to kill the company, kill
the magazine because it was itwas getting so many scoops.
And you know, he was a controlfreak.
And no, it was it was a funtime.
It was a fun time.

(18:49):
There were a guy, there was aguy, one of the best reporters I
ever worked with is a guy namedBernard Burn Bernard O'Hannion
who works who worked for MotherJones.
He's worked for a lot ofplaces.
He was this great kind ofBerkeley, he went to Berkeley,
he was this great kind ofrevolutionary, very almost
borderline socialist reporter.
I I was greatly interested inthe world.
Well, he did write for MotherJones, so I would hope he was a

(19:10):
socialist.
Yes.
And you know, another guy who Iwho I I was kind of a mentor
to, or I I got I I consideredhim like a guy I hung out with
and we was uh John Patel beforehe started Wired was on Mac Week
staff, and we would go to wewould go to shows together, we
would write stories together.
It was uh it was like a greattime.
It was so much fun.

(19:30):
I mean, it was just you got totravel, you got to meet all
these interesting people who arehaving a this huge impact on
the world, and and it was alltotally different era.
It was like such a positiveera, and like the kind of
corrosive times we live in now.
I mean, I I don't want to soundlike the guy, you know, on the
front lawn, but I just think thetech industry has changed so

(19:52):
much and not in in not entirelyfor the better.
And I'm right, I'm I'm sodisappointed on so many levels
with what's going on right now.
I absolutely hate the way theseguys go on bended knee to get
their little favors and curry,curry uh, you know, a nod from
the king.
It's just to me, it's just it'sit's absolutely sickening, and

(20:14):
I understand why most of thecountry hates the tech because I
I've I've kind of adopted theirsame behavior and the same type
of attitude.
It's just it's all the industrygot too big, it got too greedy
and too powerful for its owngood.
But I think that happens with alot of industries, and it just
eventually, inevitably, wasgoing to happen with tech, and
it and it has, and it's it'sit's gotten even more grotesque

(20:36):
with AI than than I've ever seenit before.

Dave Reddy (20:38):
We'll go to AI in a second.
I I I wanted to talk to youabout, I mean, you know, these
these early sort of halcyon dayswhere you met a lot of people,
you learned a lot of things, andyou talked about the changes in
tech.
You know, tech obviouslychanged journalism, and not
necessarily for the better,because you know, there's no
tire ads, there's no car ads,there's very little print, and
we're and the journalists, uhthe journalism industry is still

(21:01):
trying to figure out how tomonetize.
I how much, and I'm gonna Iwant to get into this with with
USA Today too, but how much havewe lost because folks like you
the at who who are you knowcoming in now don't have an
opportunity to learn the craftat a Mac Week or I I know
InfoWorld is still around, butat a larger, you know, at some

(21:22):
sort of other trade pub, youknow, that just doesn't seem to
be on the table anymore.

Jon Swartz (21:26):
Yeah, no, it's not.
I mean, it's uh it's it's sohard, first of all, to get in
the field.
I really I do feel I feel as ifI was at the tail end of the
glory era of uh journalism justin general.
I mean, when I was at theChronicle, I wasn't at the I was
not at the Chronicle very long.
They recruited me.

(21:47):
There's a guy named Pim Fox whodoes Bloomberg, who used to do
Bloomberg TV.
I'm not sure if he still doesit.
He was a business editor.
He and uh Mark Hall, who was myeditor at the at Mac Week, Mark
Hall was the greatest boss Iever had.
In fact, I felt so stronglyabout what a great guy Mark Hall
was that he and I went toRedmond once to do an interview
with Bill Gates, and we're inthe office, and Bill Gates is,

(22:09):
you know, he you know, he likesto give and take, right?
So he likes to learn things aswell as teach things, which I
found very admirable.
And at one point he talkedabout what makes a great boss.
And I used to turn next, I Ithis this was not there was no
ulterior motive because MarkHall is my will always be my
friend.
And I used to turn to him, Isaid, this guy next to me is a

(22:30):
great boss, and here's why.
And Mark got really embarrassedbecause he's just a humble guy.
But I said, you know, it'sabout not only teaching somebody
something and and bringing outthe best of them, but Mark Hall
wanted me to leave to go dosomething better.
He goes, I because it's alegacy, because if you leave
here, I'm not gonna resent you.

(22:51):
If you go somewhere as a higherprofile and it's a better
place, that reflects well on metoo.
And I was like, you get it.
And I wish there were morepeople like that, you know, who
were confident, they enjoyedwhat they did.
The Chronicle, when I workedthere, I wasn't there very long,
but I gotta tell you, when Iwas here, I would walk in the

(23:12):
hallways, you'd see uh Herb Canajust won a Pulitzer.
Remember just like talking tohim, or uh Ellen Temko, who was
the architect predict, who washe was a Pulitzer, I think he
won as well.
I would the people I was onstaff with were amazed.
The staff I was on, there wasJulia Anguin, who went to the

(23:33):
journal.
I believe she won a PulitzerPrize, and she uh is a
pro-Publica.
She was there, she started,helped start that.
There was Deb Solomon, who'sthe economics editor or was at
the New York Times.
She was at the journal.
There was uh a bunch of peoplewho went to Barron's, there were
um, there were a number ofpeople who went to the journal,
and uh I eventually I went withanother guy to Forbes.

(23:53):
It was I learned from them, andyou know, I was I was always
used to be the youngest personon every staff.
And when I was there, I was inmy early 30s, and they they took
me under their wings and theywould point out what they liked,
but they also told me what theywhat they didn't like, and but
it was it was done in aconstructive manner though, and
they were saying that.

Dave Reddy (24:13):
And I think that's what's missing.

Jon Swartz (24:14):
I think that's missing.
They were mentors, and and Idon't see I mean, even at USA
Today, when I was there, I wasalways hoping that I could work
with younger people.
And I most of the people thereweren't that young, but the
those who were younger didn'tseem to didn't seem eager or
interested in learning frompeople who had experience, like

(24:35):
they were so uptight about justfiling their story and getting
the hell out of there.
And at the at the near at theChronicle, it was all about
sharing your stories, sharingyour sources, like kind of brain
brainstorming ideas, which Ireally liked.
There people just throwconstant ideas at me.
So I've just had a wholenotebook.

(24:56):
I started files on this coyotesystem.
I had like 20 story files inprogress, like different stories
that I intended to work on thatat various stages.
And I would just eventually,when the news happened that was
applied to that story, I hadlike the shell of a story
written.
And I later found out, and it'sactually confirmed to me when I

(25:18):
was at Forbes that thatcompanies kind of think that way
too.
So, of all people, so I'm atForbes in early 2000, it's
actually 1999, I believe.
And I've got this friend ofmine who used to work at PR at
Apple, Cindy McCaffrey, and shesays to me, Hey, there's this
company called Google, you gottareally meet this guy, Sergey.

(25:39):
You gotta meet him.
I was like, I don't know.
It's like another one of thesestupid.
So I I reluctantly agree.
He comes in, you know, he'spretty shy.
And he's and he we're we're inthis uh we're in this office at
Forbes, which is in Burlingame,which overlooks SFO, right?
It's right by that formerdrive-in.
So we're looking out, he's justlooking out the window,

(26:02):
watching the planes land.
And I'm saying to him, What whyare you watching the planes
land?
And he said, you know, there'slike a certain rhythm to it.
You notice that?
Like, you know, you work onprojects, you work on things at
work.
There's some things that needto be done today, some things
need to be done next week, andthings a month from now.
So you plan it like an airtraffic controller, and it was

(26:22):
like, oh, right.
I I kind of do that sometimesbecause that's a good way of
doing doing things.
So you're always prepared, youmultitask as much as you can,
but you always think about howthese things fit together in a
in a time continuum.
And that was one of thesmartest things anyone told me.
And I just like you almost kindof said it matter-of-the-and I

(26:46):
use that template.
I mean, I kind of did before,but he he kind of cemented for
me this idea of multitasking andthe importance of not being in
the the here and now, butthinking about the future and
how things apply to the future,or even looking back to the past
and how they relate to thepast.

(27:06):
I mean, these are all likelearning moments, and I I just
don't know if people are underthat have that luxury of time
anymore to do any of this.
They're all under so muchpressure to overwrite, just
churn out as much as possible.
You know, they're they'reworried about their jobs.
I I, for the most part, untilthe last few years, I never

(27:27):
really worried about my jobsecurity.
And I just, it was a totallydifferent time.

Dave Reddy (27:32):
Let's talk about the second and perhaps longest
chunk of your career, at leastto date, which which was the 17
years you spent at USA Today.
And and I know that paper, ittook hits from the day it came
out.
I was a kid, I loved it becauseit gave me, I was this kid on
Cape Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Suddenly I had access to anational sports page.
I was a big sponsor.

Jon Swartz (27:51):
Oh, you get the box scores.
They were the first to write,push that.

Dave Reddy (27:54):
Yeah.
And then I went I went toschool in Washington and I was
an out-of-town guy.
So now rather than having toread 20 pages of Redskins
coverage every day, even in themiddle of March, I was able to
go get it, get a newspaper thatwould at least give me something
about Boston sports.
So it was a must-read.
And then I got into PR and itwas a must pitch.
It was like there was the big12, and they were, and you were

(28:15):
there for 17 years.
The physical paper was wasreally strong.
The website did is still upthere and doing solid, but it's
not what it used to be.
And then, of course, you werepart of a layoff in 2017.
How much of a loss was that?
To me, that, and not to putwords in your mouth, but to me,
that's like that that is the theshining example of the
newspaper that died because oftechnology.

Jon Swartz (28:36):
Yeah, it really is.
I mean, it's it's uh Google andFacebook really killed it with
the advertising Craigslist.
The irony is that Craig Newmarkreally loves newspapers.
And he was actually he wasactually a good source and he
was a very friendly guy, but Ithink this guts him, the fact
that he, in a sense, started thedeath of this industry that he
really did like.

(28:57):
And I think it kind of hauntshim to this day.
Yeah, so I'm gonna I started in2000.
So back in so the paperstarted, I believe, in 1982 or
thereabouts.
Correct.
And you know, I I I vowed neverever to read it or to me, it
was like that it was a devilincarnate, you know.
So I was like, I don't I don'twant to have anything to do with

(29:18):
this publication, which wasfunny because at Macweek they
love the design of USA Today.
And then and so anyway, so fastforward to 1999.
I have left the Chronicle and Iwent with a colleague to
Forbes.
USA Today tried to recruit meaway from the Chronicle as soon
as I started because they neededanother person in Silicon

(29:41):
Valley and I was covering Apple,and I was I got a I got a story
about Steve Jobs returning toApple.
So that was like the I brokethat story and he denied it and
then he went back, of course.
Yep.
He so so I Wait, wait, SteveJobs lied to you?
Is that what you're trying tosay?
Oh, yeah, he would never dothat, would he?
He would always be honest.
They're all all these guys aresuch sterling examples of

(30:02):
honesty and integrity.
Sorry.
All right, but okay.
Uh yeah, I'm just being alittle tad facetious.
But um Tad.
We like that on Crestomatic.
Yeah, it was a little snarky.
But you know, uh so I I just II back then I was like, you
know, I just started thisnewspaper, the Chronicle, you
know, they gave me a break.
I'm gonna be loyal to them fora few years at least.

(30:23):
And so I dismissed it.
And then my a friend of minewho worked at USA Today said,
hey, you should join here.
This was like in 2000.
And I was at Forbes, and Forbesto me was like it didn't at the
time, I think it totally didnot understand the tech industry
or Silicon Valley.
It thought everything was aeverything was a was so negative

(30:44):
and such a failure because itwas an East Coast publication
that totally did not understandthe the Silicon Valley ethos.
And at the on the flip side,Fortune did.
I think Fortune did anoutstanding job, right?
They they got it.
So Forbes, forbes I thought Iwas just like so caught up in in
its name and oh, we're Forbes.

(31:05):
So I I ended up ended up goingback to I ended up going to USA
Today in 2000.
They they uh they had a bigrecruiting class, and there was
a guy who I ended up writing abook with named Byron Akihito
who went to pull us through atthis yeah, Seattle Times, right?
He went to pull us on theBoeing coverage of the

(31:25):
Bretterfin.
And he uh he uh he and Istarted around the same time.
There are a number of otherpeople, they they they they put
together like all these like Ithought really good reporters.
And so for the first, I'd sayday, for like the first five to
seven years, first five to eightyears, I was at USA Today.
They wanted to do stuff thatwent beneath the surface that

(31:46):
wasn't superficial.
And Byron and I ended up doworking on this project
involving cybersecurity, and weended up doing a book in 2008.
We for a couple of years, Iguess, put us on this project,
and we just do these.
We did one story that was 4,000words that was in the paper.
And the one thing I always like,yeah, it was like the entire

(32:07):
paper.
It's it started on the frontpage and jumped twice inside.
It was like what the LA Timesdoes.
And wow, I remember, I rememberwe were so proud of that, that
the fact we were able to pullthat off, and we did a lot of
long stories.
And in fact, we did uh Ithought the stories that we did
were were like so interestingthat, in my opinion, and I I

(32:28):
usually don't I don't vouch, Idon't really pump up my stories,
but I think that what we didwas so ahead of the curve that
in a sense Wired would runexcerpts of our book.
So did Computer World at thesame time.
And and I and we we got we gota multiple awards for this
thing.
We uh we we were finalists forthe loeb.

(32:50):
We lost to a New York Timesproject that won the the one the
Pulitzer Prize, unfortunately,unfortunately for us.
But we we we had such a greattime doing it.
And I always remember afterthat 4,000-word story, which was
like a magnum opus for us, aguy back east, very nice guy,
said to me, Hey,congratulations.
You got that story in.

(33:11):
It'll never happen again.
That was and I remember justthinking about that, and I was
thinking, okay, I'll I'll stayat this paper for a decade, then
I'm gonna get out.
And then we had a new editorwho came up came aboard to
resuscitate things.
It was Dave Callaway, who ranMarket Watch.
He and Larry Kramer, who arelike this tremendous tandem,

(33:33):
they came and reinvigorated thepaper.
And Dave said, John, they didit, they did a they did an
assessment.
You know, they they came in andthey talked to a bunch of
people at all the differentbureaus and they decided what
they were gonna do movingforward.
They did kind of like thisaccounting review, and they
eventually said, We we want youto be the tech editor.

(33:55):
We know it's gonna be a lot ofwork and you're gonna be
overwhelmed, but we're gonnahelp you with resources, we're
gonna hire people, we're gonnare-rallocate, give you the
sources.
They they were absolutely rightabout that, and that made me
stay another five years.
So by the 15-year mark, therereaches a point where you work

(34:16):
somewhere where you're thinking,I can't reinvent myself much
more anymore.
I talked to Kevin Maney aboutthis, he he was always gave me
great advice advice.
He was great, and he'd say, youknow, you got to reinvent
yourself every five years or so.
And by then, I noticed Dave, by2014, we weren't getting access
that way we used to.

(34:38):
I remember for a time it wasjust like three publications had
access to jobs at every event,and we were one of them.
We were always third.
We it was the journal, thetimes, and us, and then then
they would fill in the last twoslots with rotating reporters or
publications.
That it just he got sick, ofcourse, and he died in 2011.
But I think beyond that, it wejust weren't on the short list

(35:01):
to me, at least.
It felt as if we didn't havethe access.
It was and you could see itcoming, you could see like the
Verge was the new shiny toy.
There were other pubs that weredoing doing well, and they were
more specialized and they werebetter.
I mean, I'll be honest, bettercoverage.
You know, then we got at USAToday, we got stuck in this trap

(35:25):
of trying to run and chase SEOand and traffic, and it was just
like this kind of downwardspiral.
Yeah, yeah, and it and youknow, 2008-2009, the financial
crisis just killed the paper.
They started they startedinstigating layoffs, they
started initiating those.

(35:47):
So by the time I was laid off,there had been like 12 rounds,
maybe.
There had been furloughs wherewe worked without pay, or we
took time off without pay.
I'm sorry.
We didn't work there, weweren't allowed to work during a
furlough.
We did about I did at leastthree of those, and they still
did them after I left.
My my the thing that killed mewas I wanted a buyout.
I really did, but I neverqualified because I was either

(36:09):
too young by a year or I didn'thave enough service by a year.
So by the time 2017 comes alongin September, and I know it's
just inevitable, so I'm I'm I'mthat day I'm going to for a job
interview at CNBC that daybecause I'm looking for work and
I'm talking to differentpublications, and you know it

(36:29):
happens, and it it was shocking,but I also was relieved because
you can't stay at the sameplace all these years and grow.
You gotta adapt, you gotta moveon, you gotta do things that
challenge you.
And um, I ended up going to JowJones, and I I went from like

(36:50):
mainstream reporting tofinancial reporting, so I could
so in a sense reinvented myselfuntil I got until that kind of
became tedious.
There was uh I mentioned to usekind of in the prep, but in
2017, when I was I got a bunchof job offers after I left USA

(37:10):
Today.
So and I was just trying tofigure out what I wanted to do
next.
One of the jobs that I turneddown was from India.
So Nvidia tried to get me tostart there, that was right
before they really took off.
In 2018, they had kind of adip, but after that they were
soaring.
But I just couldn't, I justcouldn't bring myself to work
internally.
So I ended up going to DowJones and it was kind of a

(37:33):
reinvention.
And now, and I was there forlike six and a half years, and
then Tech Strong, which is atotally it's journalism, but
it's also market research andand now uh analysts and a lot of
research papers.
It's it I think what'shappening, and I I run into this

(37:53):
a lot.
It shows is I run into thesereally young, smart reporters,
and I ask them, Well, where doyou work?
Oh, I work at uh Puck, I workat Semaphore, or I work at some
place I've never heard of.
And I'm like, oh, so you areheavy duty, deep in the weeds
reporting, like Byron and I usedto do in cybersecurity, which
was frowned upon by the way, atthe at USA Today.

(38:14):
I'll be very honest.

Dave Reddy (38:15):
Well, that is yeah, that is coming back at some in
some places, and that's youknow, so that so do you do you
see do you see are you happyabout that?
I mean, do you see a future inthat?
I I do.

Jon Swartz (38:26):
I'm very encouraged by that because I see these
people doing the really reallygood work and it's highly
specialized.
And I think some of the peopleI work with here at uh
TechStrong slash futurum are aredoing things, do it, writing
about topics they reallyunderstand, like at the CTO
level.
And it makes everybody smarter.

(38:47):
It also they they also like theidea of talking to generalists,
which I consider myself.
You know, the thing at USAToday, and uh, you know, again,
I love working there, I love thepeople there.
It was a great ride, it was agreat experience.
I got to see so many differentplaces and meet so many
interesting people.
But near the end, when we weredoing the cybersecurity stuff,

(39:07):
when I thought they would behappy that we did the book, they
were afraid we were gonna getsued or we were gonna embarrass
them with the book.
So that to me was like thatthat sent such a negative
message to me.
And also they they basicallysaid we can't justify two
reporters covering this beat asyou know as important as it was.

(39:27):
So you're gonna have to coversocial media from now on.
Oh like Facebook.
I was like, oh and it just tome just it epitomized the
stupidity of just broad uhmainstream journalism in
particular, and in in ingeneral, I guess, and it USA
today, and it's in the thelayoffs continue.
And I just I just went to aretirement party for three more

(39:50):
people who took buyouts.
I mean, they've gutted thatplace.
It's just it's like a you know,the the the only way they can
break even or make a profit isjust just cut as much expenses
as as uh the revenue that thepaltry revenue they bring in.

Dave Reddy (40:04):
Yeah, it's a sad it's pathetic.
It's pathetic.
One of the saddest stories injournalism, and that's saying
something.

Jon Swartz (40:10):
You know, and my friends who still are there are
just heartbroken, and I Itotally understand where they're
coming from, but you know what?
There are alternatives outhere, and if you're lucky enough
in this job market to find aplace, there are so many
interesting things that aregoing on, and with AI, you can
write about anything.
Yep.

Dave Reddy (40:29):
So to that end, you went to Dow Jones for a while.
I want to skip ahead to whereyou are now, which is
Techstrong.
Tell me about TechStrong,what's its mission?
It's it's you know, it's a it'sit's new media of a cent of a
sort.

Jon Swartz (40:44):
Yeah, they do a lot of video, they do a lot of
video.
So they we write about we havea lot of categories.
Write about security quite abit.
That's like the bread andbutter here.
DevOps is a big big deal here.
IT or platform engineering isis to a lesser extent.
AI, they're they're kind ofbequeathed to me this idea of
writing about AI in differentdifferent ways.

(41:06):
It's just a lot of content,there's a lot of contributed
material.
But in fact, I think Byroncontributes here.
There's a lot of guys who'sJames McGuire, I think, who was
the editor-in-chief of eWeek.

Dave Reddy (41:18):
Yeah, eWe, he's got tech strong of his own uh yeah.
Yeah, so he I worked with him.
He's also got uh tech voices,yeah.

Jon Swartz (41:25):
Yeah, he's good.
I I I really admire him.
He's a really good writer.
We have like uh Tom Smith, wehave a bunch of people whose
bylines I remember.
Corey Johnson was here for awhile from CNBC Bloomberg days.
I just ran into him at theevent in Las Vegas.
There were a lot of interestingfolks.
So we do a lot of video, tonsof video, lots of one-on-one

(41:47):
interviews.
We do a show five days a weekcalled Tech Strong Gang.
It's basically like uh think ofpardon the interruption in Meet
the Press, where we talk aboutthree main topics and we kind of
argue, not argue, but we wedebate or give our
interpretation of what we thinkis going on.

(42:07):
And it's highly opinionated andhighly politic political in
terms of uh addressing what'sgoing on in the tech industry
and its relationship with thegovernment.
Well, let's see, what else?
We do a lot of uh kind ofevents.
So my colleagues in Europe, oneof my colleagues is in Europe
going to different events anddoing a ton tons of interviews.

(42:29):
Uh, we're part of we mergedwith the Futurum group, which is
Daniel Newman's company.
Daniel Newman is always ontelevision.
He's on CNPC every day, itseems.
He does like three or fourmedia hits a day.
Uh, he was here too.
I saw him last night.
So we're kind of working withthem.
They did, they provide researchand then we're on the
journalism side.
So there's kind of like twosides.

(42:49):
It's an interesting dynamic.
It's to me, it's I was tellingsomebody last night, a coworker
of mine, that I learned so muchmore here because I'm around
people who understand the topicinfinitely better than any
journalism outfit I ever workedin.
And I mean, these are these arefolks that are not journalists,

(43:11):
they're they're experts in theindustry.
They built companies and theyunderstand how things work and
they are highly respected by thepeople that they interview.
And then I'm kind of in the mixwith them.
And so it's across-polinization of different
types of experiences.
There are a couple of us whoare reporters, but then for the

(43:32):
most part, these are liketechnologists who build
companies and who are highlythey are they are highly
opinionated, but they'reinformed opinionated.
That's that's the one thingthat I I find refreshing versus
you know, I used to be on a showon NBC, which I really liked
called Press Here.
Press Here, sure.
We did that for like a decade.

(43:53):
Mike uh Mike and I were on ittogether a few times.
I used to I used to go on itall the time.
Joe Men was on it, Brad Stoneat one point was on it.
Yeah, there was like a SarahLacey was always on it, she was
fantastic on that show.
We did we did these all thetime, but it was like a very
constrained format.
I mean, it was only for 22minutes.

(44:13):
There were three segments, eachlike seven minutes.
And it's really there's only somuch you can say or how deep
you can go because of theformat.
I mean, the people there areextremely smart, but I think in
this like longer conversationwith folks who are experts in
their field, they go down rabbitholes, no doubt, but you learn

(44:35):
a hell of a lot more than saywatching a kind of a a uh
conventional TV show.

Dave Reddy (44:41):
You you you are not focused on AI, but to your
point, with AI, there's there'sso much you can write about.
And and a lot of your yourheadlines, and I'm looking at
some just the last 24 hours,you've written three stories
that have AI.
It's about Oracle.
Yeah, there's Oracle, Amazon,and Salesforce.
So talk to me about AI.
Uh it it's every I I ask thisquestion every month, and every

(45:02):
month I get a different answerbecause every month it's
different.

Jon Swartz (45:05):
So whatever you want it to be.
It's like it's like theultimate uh how do you pronounce
that?
It's like the the Rothschesttest.
I can't pronounce that word.
You know, it's like the the thethe butter.
What does this image representto you?
It's a butterfly.
No, it's a it's a it's a flyingcar.
Yeah, no, it to me it's it'ssomething that's been around for

(45:28):
decades.
It goes through differentiterations, it's it means
whatever you want it to mean.
It to unfortunately, uh, forsome people, it just means even
greater profits at the expenseof humans being employed.
You saw Amazon's, I thinkAmazon's gonna get rid of 15% of
their HR department, and it'sdirectly tied to AI-driven

(45:51):
productivity and restructuring.
Salesforce laid off 4,000people in customer service out
of 9,000, and they're beingreplaced by agents.
So I was talking to Will Iamabout this, and he said, you
know, I of all people, he was atthe Dream Dream Force.
I just talked with him, and hesaid, you know, it's technology
is awesome, totally awesome,what it can do.

(46:13):
But the problem is if you applya social media business model
to a gentic, that's gonna lead,that's no bueno, as I as he put
it.
It's gonna lead to all sorts ofhorrible things unless there's
some sort of unless you regulatethe your use of it.
And to me, it it I think of theI think of like the car
industry and how it wasn'tregulated until there was a

(46:33):
Ralph Nader.
I think of how these thingslike social media was completely
out of control and the damageit did to people, you know,
unfettered uh when it wasn't, itwasn't any under any auspices.
And I think AI can do so manygreat things.
And I think it willoverwhelmingly do, it'll make
our lives easier, we'll liveprobably longer, we'll be more

(46:56):
productive, we'll we'll discoverthings, we won't waste as much
time on these tedious tasks.
The flip side, of course, isyou know, if it becomes so
efficient, yeah, does iteliminate the need for humans?
And I I that that terrifies me.
And and I I see these companiesfrom the board down, it's like

(47:17):
a top-down mandate.
In you know, integrate AI asfast as you possibly can.
If there's a catastrophiccybersecurity issue, we'll we'll
address it later.
Or there's gonna be a bubble.
Yeah, we'll we're we're notwe're not affected by that.
That's that's company B andcompany C.
We're we're gonna be fine.
I just think that there's somuch money involved, and so

(47:39):
everyone is pursuing the samegoal that there is gonna be an
AI bubble bloodbath.
Yeah, I do worry about that.
It's inevitable.
You know, it's gonna happen.
And there's also gonna be somecatastrophic data breaches, I
believe, that are inevitablebecause the security is lacking,
it's laggard, it's far behind.

(47:59):
It's not it's not a topconsideration, really.
And I I always feel feel badlyabout people who don't have
access to technology or who feelthey they will be displaced.
I uh I think in journalism it'sgonna be fairly pronounced
impact, not for the bestreasons.
I mean, you're already startingto see this in terms of AI use.

(48:21):
I mean, it's just gonna replacea bunch of it's like the wire
store wire service.
Man, I could see that can becompletely replaced by AI.
Sure.
Sports storage sports coverage.
Yeah, yeah.
I think AP does use in limitedcases, they do identify their
use of it, but it's gonna beused in financial uh reporting,
like for quarterly results.

(48:42):
I already is being used, it'sbeing developed everywhere
internally.
Most most public cases.
I ask, I use Claude and I askClaude to help me uh in terms of
research.
I don't always trust Claudebecause sometimes the facts are
a little murky, but I will useit as a backup because there's,
I mean, as a reporter, sometimesthere's so much happening.

(49:05):
You're like, okay, there werethree instances of something
involving layoffs.
Like, what were the but I don'tremember, like I before I had
to go on Google to figure out amI missing something in this
story?
So I would say, hey Claude,there were like three major
instances of layoffs recently.
Can you recount them for me?
Because I honestly will forgetmaybe miss one of them, and

(49:28):
it'll point it out, and then Iwill take a look, and then I
will write, overwrite.
I I'll try to put it the storyin my own voice, but I use it as
a as an assistant, just as abackstop.
And I will ask it to editsomething just for
inconsistencies in grammar, andit'll make suggestions.

(49:49):
Sometimes, sometimes it willtry to change the lead, which I
find really like it will it willstrip out anything that sounds
original or pithy and replace itwith something that's very
generic.
And I it does this all thetime.
And apparently it likes to addm-dashes.
That's the oh yeah.
So there are three, all right.
So there are tons of m-dashes,lots of subheads, and the last

(50:11):
paragraph of an AI story will bea summarization of what has
already been written.
And it will bury the leadalmost all the time.
It will do everything insequence.
I noticed that.
And if you if you don'tspecifically, if you're not
specific in what you want, itwill go off on these weird
tangents.
Like Claude once I asked itabout a court case, and it

(50:34):
created a fictionalized versionof this the case with a
character that does not exist.
And I asked it, why did youinsert this person's name?
Why did you and it didn't replyto me?
I mean, it just it didn'trespond.
And I I saw I wasn't passingjudgment.
I was like, How did you come tothis idea?
And it just it never explainedit.

(50:55):
It just it ghosted me.
Does Claude have feelings?
May I may have hurt Claude'sfeelings, and then I said, I I I
I apologize.
I said, I I I should have beenmore specific on what I was
asking.
I just wanted a clear idea ofuh some background about this
this court case because I don'tknow anything about it, and then
it gave me a straight straightanswer.

(51:16):
So it may have been the onusmay have been on me, actually.

Dave Reddy (51:19):
I think you may I think you may have actually uh
upset it.
And going back to 2001, a spaceodyssey, we know that
artificial intelligence, it'snot a good idea.
Yeah, I try to be polite, Ialways try to be polite to the
the chat bots.
So a couple of fun questions tofinish.
So how many weeks are you onthe road?
You and I actually earlier thisyear on the plane, I think.

(51:41):
Going to yeah, go both on aflight to Vegas, going to
different tech shows.

Jon Swartz (51:46):
So that was crazy, I know.

Dave Reddy (51:48):
Well, how many weeks a year are you on the road and
how often are you in Vegas?

Jon Swartz (51:53):
So I go to Vegas on on average like five or six
times a year now.
I go to New York not thatoften, but I do go there.
There have been places I'vegot, I mean, they I've gone to
San Diego, Seattle, where wasthe others?
Usually it's the same cities,but multiple times.
There was one week that wascrazy, one week where there were

(52:16):
shows the same week, there wereshows in Nashville, Napa, and
Boston.
I went to Napa because it wasthe easiest to get to.
Plus, it was, you know, it'sjust nice.
There's it's like New Orleansis coming up.
There are shows in Europe allthe time now.
That's that's now a a severalover there right now.

(52:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's there was just one inBarcelona.
I think it was uh Atlassian hadone in Barcelona.
There's one in Amsterdam thisweek, there's one in Paris over
the weekend.
I I almost went to that one,but that one kind of fell
through.
There were there are let's see,they tend to be the same.

Dave Reddy (52:57):
Right now, the the the the local version.
Uh network X is in Network X isin Paris.
I am at the Open ComputeProject in San Jose.
I mean it's it's uh dream forthe first time.

Jon Swartz (53:07):
Well today we today we had the show uh uh Tech
Strong Gang, which is we do itearly in the morning, and so
there were there were there wasme and Mitch.
We're in Vegas, Alan was inHouston, Mike was in Amsterdam,
and then we had ourcybersecurity reporter in New
York.
Wow, everybody travel is back.
Oh god, I know.

(53:28):
I mean, I I am uh you know, I'mkind of just getting my last
burst of travel.
I think you know what happensis it this goes on between
August and Thanksgiving.
That's that's that's trade showseason, the fall push.
Yes, and then it then it tapersoff dramatically.

Dave Reddy (53:46):
Yeah, then everybody decides to go uh relax over
eggnog for and turkey for a fewweeks.
My last question is always thesame, it although it's different
parts.
So I'm gonna ask you so SanJose, Georgia, or your second
home, Las Vegas.
Oh, so what so what was thequestion?
I'm sorry.

Jon Swartz (54:02):
What where would you rather be?
San Jose?
Oh, oh, oh, well, I moved to soI Las Vegas never.
More than no more than 48hours.
That's my rule.
48 hours in Vegas, and that'sit.
Then I'm out.

Dave Reddy (54:16):
So now we know what's like.

Jon Swartz (54:19):
So it's top of mind.
And I have a I have likeallergies, so Vegas wreaks havoc
with my with my but I uh BayArea.
I mean, I'm from the Bay Area,I grew up there.
I moved away, I went to schoolin Georgia, and I lived in lived
in London.
But yeah, I mean, I likeAthens, but Athens is kind of in
another world, it's so faraway.
But San Jose, I mean it waslike family and friends all live

(54:42):
there.
That's what I grew up with.
I like the weather, I likeeverything about it,
everything's close to it.
I love the way people thinkthere.
You know, there's just it's ait's an appealing place to me.
Yeah, no, I no, no, no ill willtowards Las Vegas.
It's just like I I think I'vehad my fill of it this this
year, last year too.

(55:04):
Fair enough.
A lot of shows in Florida, bythe way.
Oh, yes, I've I've been to afew in my own time.
Yeah, oh god, yeah.
I I used to go to Florida alot.
Yeah, that's just a long trip,though.

Dave Reddy (55:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's way down south.
At any rate, John, this wasgreat.
Thank you so much.
Oh, thanks for having me.
I appreciate it.
Lots of fun, lots of funstories, thank you.

Jon Swartz (55:26):
Here, my you bet.

Dave Reddy (55:28):
I'd like to thank you all for listening today, and
once again a big thank you toJohn Swartz of TechStrong Group.
Please don't forget to join usnext month when we chat with yet
another member of the B2B TechTop 200.
In the meantime, if you've gotfeedback on today's podcast, or
if you'd like to learn moreabout Big Valley marketing and
how we identified the B2B TechTop 200, be sure to drop me an
email at d ready atbigvalley.co.

(55:50):
That's D-R-E Double D Y at BigValley, all one word.co.
No M.
You can also email the wholeteam at pressing matters at
bigvalley.co.
Once again, thanks forlistening, and as always, think
big.