Here's a question: if someone like Esther Dyson or Dave Winer or Jim Fawcette called you in the morning and said "how would you like to keynote my conference, I guarantee there'll be 4000 people in the audience?"

Would you do it?

Why or why not?

Now, if I said you could reach the same people by doing a weblog, would you do it?

Why or why not?

Just asking, cause I hear the anti-blog cynicism a lot of places lately. "I can't afford the time to blog" or "it's not important that I blog" or "blogs are for kids" or "only dweebs blog" or "my boss doesn't think it's important that I blog" or "my shareholders don't care that I blog" or "our customers don't care about my blog."

Oh really?

I think the time is coming where executives and employees who blog well are going to start getting promotions. Why? Ask your execs what happens to them when they start turning down keynote opportunities at major industry conferences. Ask what happens to them when they consistently get invited to speak at industry conferences and they do a good job at it.

Why turn down the opportunity to communicate with 4000 people a day? Does that make sense?

Steve Ballmer, for instance, spoke to the MVPs last month. 1200 people. Took an hour of his time. Was that a waste of his time? I certainly don't think so.

Why do we think it's a waste of time for executives to blog? Isn't it time that we started looking at it as just another way to communicate with customers and markets?

Alec Saunders picks up the back and forth between me and Michael Gartenberg: design from the edge.

Read Michael's followup to Alec. Go ahead, I'll wait for you to come back.

One thing, though. I used to sell cameras. I can't tell you how many Nikons I sold because "that's what the pros were using."

So, by designing for the edge case (the pro photographer) Nikon got the amateur, who liked the brand name and the cachet of carrying around a camera that a "pro" would use.

Or look at my Nike sneakers. Were they designed for a fat white guy who sits on the couch with a Tablet PC and blogs all night? No! They were designed for some guy who runs 15 miles a day and probably has a few gold medals up on his bookshelf.

The rational side of me says I bought them cause they are comfortable. But the emotional side of me must admit that I bought them cause they were designed for the edge case.

Lots of things are designed and marketed this way. Heck, look at the Hummer. Way more than anyone needs. But the edge case became mainstream.

Dudley posted some screen captures off of his Mac and his Windows XP machine. Funny thing. At work on my CRT screen the two screen captures looked pretty close and I agreed with his analysis (the small font was better on XP, the Japanese font looked better on the Mac).

But now I'm home on my Tablet PC there IS NO CONTEST between the screen shots. The XP ones win by a mile. I think we're onto something here. If you don't have an LCD monitor, or if your monitor isn't set to the correct resolution, or if the ClearType hasn't been tuned properly, you'll probably think the Mac is better. But, sorry, no cigar here. Not even close.

And, yes, you're invited to my house to see these up close and personal.