Publish Magazine has an interesting interview with Naked Conversations co-author, Shel Israel.
Scoble should be fired, author tells Microsoft
October 27, 2005 By
Heh, I’m getting emails from across Microsoft. Seems that Brian Fugere just told Microsoft, in a presentation on the Redmond Campus (we invite people to speak to our employees nearly every day — those speeches are recorded and streamed to every employee on our intranet), to fire me. I haven’t heard his presentation, but figured I’d put that out there and see what he says.
Who is he? He’s one of the authors of Why business people speak like idiots.
His quote, as passed to me by other Microsoft employees: “You PAY that guy to criticize you??? Maybe I missed some irony?”
I’m not sure if that’s the exact quote. Tomorrow when I get back on campus I’ll check the video out and get the exact quote and context behind what he said. Here’s another interpretation of what he said: “I think it’s crap that you guys pay Scoble to work here and say the things he does. Paying some one to criticize your company? Not at my company.”
So, thought I’d take that calling out into public and see what you think. Maybe I should start a Web site: Fire Scoble or not.
How do I feel about this? It comes with the job. If you write in public you better be ready for broadsides to come from all angles. I won’t argue with his points until I know the full story. It is a good way to get some traffic to his book site, though. I bet that video will be highly viewed one inside Microsoft.
Update: Here’s the quote, thanks to Steven: “I’m shocked that you guys tolerate Scoble. I mean, it’s like give me a break. Here’s a guy that you pay to criticize you. And you can say, I know the other side of the argument, I’m well aware of it, it’s like listen celebrate, you know, celebrate the openness and all that kind of stuff. To me that’s crap. I think it’s crap. You pay him to say the kinds of things he says? Not in my company man, no way. But I like the other things, the fact that you’re opening up and blogging and working with your customers.”
Also, two employees who attended the talk wrote about it on their blogs. I hear the talk overall was great. Here’s Liz Lawley’s blog and Adam Barr’s blogs about the event.
Les Blog in Paris program set
October 25, 2005 By
I can’t wait for Les Blogs 2.0 conference in Paris. They just released the schedule. Marc Canter said he’s going, among others. It’s our first time in Paris and we’re gonna have a great time. I have a new slide deck — all based on Hugh Macleod’s cartoons. I limited myself to the clean ones. It was hard finding good ones that didn’t use adult language.
Thanks, Michael, for the nice review
October 24, 2005 By
Michael Gartenberg has been reading our new book and is liking what we wrote. That’s very gratifying. Thanks! Amazon just opened a new page for our book at www.amazon.com/nakedconversations.
Another really nice review came in from Neville Hobson.
Our book blog is over at http://www.nakedconversations.com .
Visit to Monster Cable
October 24, 2005 By
Every once in a while I get an invite to talk to a company I wouldn’t otherwise have visited. Everytime I do this I learn a ton. Today was no exception. The company I visited today? Monster Cable.
See, they have a problem.
If you search Google or MSN for “Home Theater” you don’t find any manufacturers. Here’s that query on MSN. On Google. On Yahoo.
What do you see instead? Magazines, forums and blogs. They are realizing they better learn about the blogging world.
Even worse. Go to Technorati. Search on “Monster Cable.” There are more than 2,000 posts. You should have seen their eyes when they realized the world was talking about them and their products and they weren’t even watching. They are now. 
Does this matter? They have 1,000 employees working away in Brisbane, CA, near Silicon Valley. What would happen if their sales went up or down by 10%?
And they do have a big opportunity staring them in the face: HDTV. Everyone who buys a new HDTV is going to need new cables.
Now, who are the most authoritative people about the home theater market? Well, let’s talk about Chris Greene. He’s an associate product category manager there. But he has owned his own laser disk store, and worked at Silicon Valley’s top home theater store (Century Stereo). He knows more about the home theater market than anyone else I know.
I’d love to read a blog by him, or other Monster employees. These guys live and breathe home theaters. They know all the big players in the industry. The latest trends (Chris was telling me about new remote controls coming soon that’ll let you control not just your AV system, but your entire house).
And they certainly know about cables and other audio/video accessories.
Share that expertise with us, and we’ll link and link often. Imagine what a link on Engadget is worth? It’s those links that’ll get them on the search result pages for “home theater.” And what’s that worth? Well, look at all the ads on that page and you’ll get your answer.
Our book cover decided on
October 23, 2005 By
I haven’t talked much about our book, Naked Conversations, which is about corporate blogging, but I’m really getting excited about its January release. First of all, some pre-release galleys got into the hands of reviewers last week and we’ve been getting nice praise. We finally got a cover that we liked too.
