I liked this picture of me.
I've gotten so much email that I'm just struggling mentally. It's all catching up now. I stayed at work until 4:30 a.m. (hey, no senioritis here!) and was back here at 9:30 a.m. for an interview with our new Vice President of Corporate Strategy, Alex Gounares (he just came off of a two-year-stint as Bill Gates technical assistant).
If you had any doubts whether the company was going to press on with blogging and customer conversations, have no doubt. Alex says the company is going to accelerate its usage of blogging. He says that they are seeing so many good things come out of the blogging movement inside the company that they'd be stupid to try to slow it down.
He also showed me the new ThinkWeek site. Now, for the first time, every employee can visit the site and vote for their favorite ThinkWeek papers. Oh, and they can see what Bill and other people thought about the papers.
I just realized I'm having the most weird experiences ever since I told everyone I quit. Not only did he give me one of the best interviews I've ever gotten but after the camera is off he gave me some personal business advice about things to look for in the video space.
Would you let an employee who announced to the world that he was leaving walk around your executive offices with a camcorder? I'm not sure many companies in the world would.
Oh, and he invited me back to work at Microsoft just in case my new gig didn't work out, but added "next time, though, we're gonna ask you some coding questions in your interview."
I joked back "they should have done that when they hired me the first time."
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Well, while I'm in blog lock, I'm still digging out and still giving interviews. Tomorrow morning I'll be on BBC Radio.
Today Mary Jo Foley gave me my first "exit interview." Hers was easy. Charles Torre is planning to do one and he asks really tough questions, not looking forward to that!
Ed Brill, of IBM, notes that corporate blogs are often best used to talk to internal audiences. I totally agree. There's something about putting an idea in public that gets it considered a lot more strongly than just writing an email to a contained group of people. Anyway, Ed is taking stock of how many IBM employees read his blog.
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Lots of media on my leaving.
Beet.TV was the one who broke my news (that'll teach me not to tell a few bloggers about what I was doing. Heheh.) and they have a bunch of video from VLoggercon, and some news from Google's video team as well.
I'm on Geek Entertainment TV.
Scott Beale has great photos, as usual, of VLoggerCon.
Xolo.TV has a video interview with me.
I'm on BeachWalks with Rox (she does a show every day from a beach in Hawaii — sadly I wasn't in Hawaii for this one).
Leo Laporte, on This Week in Tech, says he has the last podcast I've done before I quit my job.
Any other video interviews? Leave a link in the comments here.
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Inside Microsoft asks if I'll still be at a bunch of conferences. Yes, definitely. One of my first plans is to travel the world with John Furrier and get out of the echo chamber of Silicon Valley.
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Vik tells how I snatched him from Google.
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I love Thomas Hawk. His photos are inspiring.
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Rick Schaut gave me some advice that led, in part, to my decision.
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But, I do have my detractors. Among them is Shmula and some of his commenters who think I'm possibly not sincere. Bill Trippe thinks I'm not terribly interesting (he's right) and that my value just declined a whole lot (hope not, but he's probably right there too).
James Fee says "I'm unsubscribing."
Update: I totally forgot about Rocketboom. My son and I are on Rocketboom with Amanda. Now you know why I really quit Microsoft — I wanted to see Amanda again!
Garrett: I don’t know. I had to show up to get one.
Realestateceo: My last day at Microsoft is June 30.
One name Robert - Leonard Nimoy.
He went on to work in a couple of shows, but he was/is forever known as Spock, from the planet Vulcan.
I’ll be interested to see if you have become so closely tied to Microsoft that you’ll never be known as anything else.
Either way, I’m very happy for you! It sounds like you’ll be very happy in the direction you’ve decided to set out in.
One name Robert - Leonard Nimoy.
He went on to work in a couple of shows, but he was/is forever known as Spock, from the planet Vulcan.
I’ll be interested to see if you have become so closely tied to Microsoft that you’ll never be known as anything else.
Either way, I’m very happy for you! It sounds like you’ll be very happy in the direction you’ve decided to set out in.
Robert,
It’s funny you mentioned about coding questions … because, funnily enough, it always seems tougher to get into big companies when you are looking for non code-developer kind of gigs. I mean, what would be the direct path to someone who knew his technology but didn’t want a coding job?!
During graduation, I heard this from numerous friends who were in job hunting mode (me, I just did the startup thingy!)
Lets take an example … someone has a successful startup, it grows, matures, and outside directors/managers are given control and/or it gets merged/sold. How can someone with this resume even approach one of the software biggies for a job. Not through the /jobs part of the website for sure … that only deals with one kind of serious job … programming!
Robert,
It’s funny you mentioned about coding questions … because, funnily enough, it always seems tougher to get into big companies when you are looking for non code-developer kind of gigs. I mean, what would be the direct path to someone who knew his technology but didn’t want a coding job?!
During graduation, I heard this from numerous friends who were in job hunting mode (me, I just did the startup thingy!)
Lets take an example … someone has a successful startup, it grows, matures, and outside directors/managers are given control and/or it gets merged/sold. How can someone with this resume even approach one of the software biggies for a job. Not through the /jobs part of the website for sure … that only deals with one kind of serious job … programming!
Just got this one……
http://redmondmag.com/news/article.asp?editorialsid=7522
Just got this one……
http://redmondmag.com/news/article.asp?editorialsid=7522
I saw the “Cutts” on your shirt and thought, “No way… does that say what I think it says?”
Hehe, nice shirt.
I saw the “Cutts” on your shirt and thought, “No way… does that say what I think it says?”
Hehe, nice shirt.
[...] The world was shaken by the loss of a General at Microsoft this week. It was stunned by the loss of a man who was cutting edge, who had pioneered changes at the company when change was needed. That man was Bill Gates Robert Scoble. [...]
[...] The week past has witnessed blogosphere’s shock-horror-all-is-lost reactions to Robert Scoble’s announcement that he will leave Microsoft to join Podcast. This was greeted by a mixture of true emotion and disbelief that the voice of Microsoft would go and do such a thing. There was a spattering of some “so what who cares”. [...]
[...] Original post by Robert Scoble Escrito en Uncategorized, Scoble family [...]
[...] Scoble Can You Do Me a Favor? Message to Robert Scoble: Can you please do me a favor? As a fellow TabletPC fan, employee (for the moment) of Microsoft and all-around blogging pro – please go over to the TabletPC team, program manager, whomever and whack them in the head for me. When it was launched I was very happy to see the TabletPC team start blogging. The thought of news and views from the horse’s mouth really had me excited. Then – nothing. Three posts in six months? Wow. I know they are busy – so am I. But to me that is inexcusable. Get serious or remove the blog. Unsubscribed. Published Wednesday, June 21, 2006 11:39 AM by ntpro [...]