Seth Godin recommends you show your boss Robert Scoble's newest video.
LIFT is about teaming talented observers, explorers, and builders with people whose work depends on understanding current challenges and creative solutions presented by emerging technologies. Attendees will face cutting edge business models, bold predictions, radical thinking -- ideas to inject into their own part of the planet.
LIFT has a simple goal: connect people who are passionate about new applications of technology and propel their conversations into the broader world to improve life and work
Scoble on:
What's a good blog?
Passionate and authoritative.
What does a good business blog contain?
What both me AND my competition does.
Why do you share key knowledge about your business?
Because other people don't have the time or desire to do what you do, they would rather hire you instead.
He used to shop prices and know his marketplace, and created a spreadsheet about both his prices and the competition (ala the grocery store milk/bread/potato price comparison board)
Change is not death
Fear of change is death
Conversations on Channel9 are not edited. It's true reality TV.
Everytime he talks at companies, he smells the fear in the room. (Fear of losing job, worry about talking outside the box, worry about politics, worry about the new world of blogging)
How fast do ideas spread?
The night before Vista's name was released, the leak of the name was on 1200 blogs.
Channel9 had 100k visitors on the first day without any formal PR. Someone figured out the server was live and started emailing their friends. (MEME Effect)
The word-of-mouth network is all powerful.
Back in history, word-of-mouth was physical. (Newspaper, Water Cooler Protocol) Now it's the inter-web.
Mentions the Mac & Engadget & Rocketboom & John Furrier.
Obscurity to front-page of NY Times when Tsunami hit.
If I write Microsoft here... it goes into Robert's aggregator at Pubsub. (I don't believe you Robert... please email me at robertscoble @ wavesmash.com with a coupon for your new book, and post a video on Channel9 with some ideas on what project managers at MS look at when monitoring their projects & project plans. :)
Watches keywords Xbox, Web 2.0, Microsoft.
Trains people on how to use RSS to watch who is talking about your product.
3 Trends leading to blogs
Unemployment and layoffs spark new tools. (Six Apart)
Disgust around corporate scandals and .COM bust. A situation where we didn't know what was going on in the world. Wanted to see and join transparent companies that do no evil. (?)
Sick of the marketing. Perfect advertising. Committee-driven. Wanted to compare notes with people around the world.
Blogs were Robert's way of getting things into Google.
The effect of Superbowl marketing messages that come down on you. Blogs are a pushback.
Question: Is alot of your cultural resistance to blogs coming from execs who are spending big on ad campaigns and polished videos?
The answer as a question from Bill Gates (through the mouth of Robert) Why do I want to talk to 300 people on a blog, when I can afford to print a 20-page spread in the NY Times?
Robert pisses off PR by showing his (and MS's) faults.
....
I just thought of a good idea. Why doesn't MS get rid of the Blue Screen of Death (or the new .NET framework exception) and replace it with a picture of Robert and a link to his blog? Maybe with the 'thumbs-up' sign and a cartoon bubble that says "We're trying harder!"
I've been a fan of Robert ever since he added me to his MSN (before he reached the friends limit.)
more to come...
