Dueling Analysts Jim Brown and Chad Jackson, Coming to a Browser Near You

Many moviegoers regularly tuned into the Siskel & Ebert show when it was on the air, to find out how the two film critics, Gene Siskel from The Chicago Tribune and Roger Ebert from The Chicago Sun-Times, felt about the blockbusters opening soon. But I suspect even more tuned to just to see if they might catch a glimpse of the critics dueling over their difference of opinions on Back to the Future, The Last Emperor, or The Shawshank Redemption—live!

There may be a PLM (product lifecycle management) equivalent of that experience in the web TV series recently launched, titled Tech4PD (technology for product development) at Engineering.com. (The premiere episode is now online, available here.) Jim Brown from Tech-Clarity and Chad Jackson from Lifecycle Insights, both recognizable faces in the product lifecycle industry, are the two anchors who will explore what they agree and disagree on hot topics.

Not only can you watch the two of them defend their respective positions, you can also vote on who you side with. The loser (this may be the big draw of the show) will be forced to suffer certain inventive consequences, also suggested by viewers. In their first episode, Brown and Jackson tackled “Granularity vs. Integration.”

Brown’s position is, “If data and processes aren’t in sync and thought through together, your data won’t support your processes and your processes won’t support your data. They need to be looked at and architected together.”

Jackson’s position is, “Core product development data and processes don’t have to be integrated. It takes far too much effort to get all of your data under control and managed, then get your processes under control, and then figure out how they are all connected.”

Your vote will decide who will suffer the first consequence: either Brown or Jackson will be brushing his teeth with wasabi.

For Siskel & Ebert, the ultimate endorsement was the thumb’s up gesture. Brown and Jackson haven’t settled on a signature gesture to show approval. (For expressing disapproval, they have a few, but some might not be suitable for broadcasting, Brown admitted.)

Though not professional movie critics, they also weighed in (at my request) on one of the sappiest cinematic melodramas of our time: James Cameron’s Titanic (recently released on Blu-Ray).

• Brown: I laughed, I cried.
• Jackson: The sap hurdle in Titanic is way too high for engineers.

Incoming votes for the first episode currently are in favor of Jackson’s view. “Things are not looking too good right now for me,” noted Brown, who is in peril of having to brush his teeth with wasabi.

Brown and Jackson hope that their mix of humor, discussion, and playful treatment will spur the debate topics further and encourage interested parties to examine different perspectives before making critical decisions.

To get a taste of Tech4PD, you can listen to the podcast below, where I engaged Brown and Jackson in a rapid-fire series of topics they disagree on.