Lauren Horwtiz is a Senior Content Director for Informa, writing primarily for IoT World Today. Prior to her role at Informa, Lauren was Managing Editor of Cisco.com and Senior Executive Editor in the Business Applications and Architecture group at TechTarget. With over 20 years of experience in the digital publishing industry under her belt, Lauren has an extensive knowledge of digital trends. She joins ConnectThe2 to discuss her favorite aspects of covering IoT, the upsides and downsides of PR pitches, the future of smart environments and more. If you like what you’re reading, be sure to listen to the entire episode linked at the bottom of this page.
Salient topics in IoT...
When asked about her favorite topics beneath the IoT umbrella, Lauren tells us that understanding digital health has been a key focus for her this year. While the world was certainly headed in that direction, the pandemic has accelerated the shift by making the need for digital health far more glaring. Two other topics that have piqued Lauren’s interest in recent months have been (1) security and redefining the way we think about our data and (2) smart environment trends post-COVID.
The power of digital twin technology...
Lauren tells us that one of the most powerful stories she has covered recently focused on digital twin technology. While this technological approach itself is not uncommon, Lauren explains that her source’s application was unique: he was using digital twin technology to model healthy human hearts. The story was especially inspirational given her source’s stake in the game: his own daughter had been born with a defective heart.
Pro PR pitch tip…
Lauren explains that lengthy PR pitches are often overwhelming for targeted publications such as IoT World Today. She urges PR people to distill their pitches down to relay information that is directly relevant to the publication they are reaching out to. Lauren suggests that PR agencies begin their pitches with some concise bullet points to display a clear understanding of the publication’s needs.
Hear more...
If you've enjoyed these takeaways be sure to listen to our full interview linked below. Also, be sure to listen to, rate and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, iHeartRadio or Soundcloud.
Quotes
“I spent many years of my career trying to really cultivate that roster of smart, tech-savvy freelancers who either really understand technology or they’re good writers. And certainly the technologists, the IT pros that we use for stories are also sometimes our sources for comments.” (11:20-11:52)
“I like to think of IoT Today as always offering in some of our longer stories still that opportunity to cover the waterfront and really hear from different sources on a topic and do a state of the nation. It’s very labor-intensive….in media, we’re moving at a faster pace now, so investing resources in one story gets harder and harder, but I still think it’s the best way to do a story.” (16:15-16:43)
“I think PR people spend a lot of time writing really lengthy pitches, but actually they’d be better served not spending so much time on the prose and really distilling the information down, so that it’s really efficiently presented for people who are getting 50, 60, 100 pitches a day.” (21:28-21:48)
“When you look at some of the smart environments that are being built right now, they’re often for residential and corporate use combined, there’s a lot of mixed use stuff happening, and we’re just looking at a whole different way of living and working, often in tandem.” (23:01-23:25)
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