Editorial Mission & Positioning

Black Swan Telecom Journal is a professional zine and on-line community for people active in or responsible for managing telecom business assurance functions.

That includes service provider people as well as those who sell software, services, and consulting to the telecoms.  “Telecoms” are communications firms offering services such as: mobile and fixed telephony, messaging, data/broadband, cable/video/satellite, cloud and virtual network services.

Business assurance is an evolving term that encompasses many fields, most notably: revenue assurance, fraud management, cost/margin management, security, and revenue maximization.  The emphasis of these disciplines is operational excellence and business protection through superior analytic, auditing, and process improvement techniques.

Where we differ from other communications industry zines is that we will not cover breaking industry news.  Our focus instead is on professional learning through case studies, how-to advice, and perspective on current telecom trends and best/future practices.  In this respect, the Journal mirrors the professional content you’d find in medical or technical journals, except our writing style will be plain talk like Fortune Magazine.

Our 2012 Editorial Goals

Since 2012 is the first year of the Journal’s publication, our key goal is to establish Black Swan as the quality information provider for managers and professionals in our niche.  Here are our more specific editorial goals for our first 12 months of publication:

1. Number of Articles.  In addition to the 57 articles already posted here as we launch, we plan to publish at least 80 new articles in the next 12 months that get to the heart of what telecom professionals and managers need to know about business assurance practices and related issues.
2. Carrier and Consultant Contributions.  We will ensure that at least 40 articles are contributions by (or interviews with) industry consultants and telecom carrier experts.
3. World Coverage.  About 50% of our editorial coverage will feature case studies, practices, and issues in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific.  The remaining 50% will be oriented around North American assurance.
4. Focus on the Information Needs of Service Provider Professionals.  Our editorial starting point is the information needs of business assurance professionals, and secondarily the needs of software/services vendors who sell to the telecoms.  If one-third of a business assurance manger’s time is devoted to selecting and managing third party solutions and services, the remaining two-thirds of time is around the actual practice of assurance, including the hiring of analyst talent, forensic investigations, organizing work, coordinating with other departments, improving processes and hundreds of other concerns.  At Black Swan, we will do our best to strike an editorial balance between the “practices” and “solutions” sides of business assurance.
5. Broad Subject Coverage.  We will inform our readers on a wide range of business assurance topics.  That being said, our editorial coverage depends on the kind of carrier experts and consultants we are able to attract and the types of opinion columns and white papers that the software/services firms are willing to fund.
6. Telecom and B/OSS Editorial.  To do their job effectively, business assurance professionals also need a broad understanding of current telecom industry and B/OSS issues, so we intend to cover those subjects as well in Black Swan.

Contributions by Telecom Managers and Professionals

We welcome contributions by executives, managers, and analysts who work at communications service providers.

If you believe you have something interesting to contribute, please contact us.

The ideal contribution is a case study where you talk about program implementation, management and lessons learned.  Another area of keen interest to us is advice on a particular practice in revenue, fraud, cost, or security assurance.  For instance, lending some advice on the hiring and training of revenue assurance analysts would be a good topic.

In any case, Black Swan will be happy to lend our writing knowhow to help bring your perspective to the community in a professional manner.

Contributions by Software, Services, and Consulting Firm Professionals

We highly value the contributions from professionals at software, services, and consulting firms.

The simplest and low-cost way to get coverage is through byline contributed articles and hiring Black Swan to help shape your story for the community.  Please refer to our advertising page for more details.