Scobleizer Weblog

Daily link Friday, February 11, 2005

Dave Winer has a correction for the Economist article about me.

I have another one. Lenn Pryor was ONE of the guys who hired me. Vic Gundotra really deserves the credit for finding me, though. It was in a Tablet PC newsgroup (not on my blog. I told him about my blog after he bought a Tablet PC from me at NEC).

Finally, I really don't deserve the credit for humanizing Microsoft. There were about 100 bloggers already doing that work when I got to Microsoft. In particular, Joshua Allen deserves that title more than anyone. He is our Jackie Robinson of bloggers.

He'll never take that kind of credit, by the way. But he was Microsoft's first "Chief Humanizing Officer" and, for that, I'm eternally grateful because he took the real risk in talking with customers in a new way.

11:30:37 PM    comment 

Volker Will (he's Microsoft's 64-bit guy): Who needs 64-bit?

8:45:45 AM    comment 

My speeches today at San Jose State were a lot of fun. About 100 people showed up for the one at the beautiful SJSU library (it was built on the spot where I attended my first class and is 1,000 times better than what was there before).

Thanks to Steve Sloan (my former boss), Stephen Greene (former professor of mine) and Dennis Dunleavy (photojournalism instructor).

I was struck by how many students thought they would be working at newspapers in the future. I think I got a few of them to think differently.

To everyone who participated, thanks for making my day an enjoyable one. I have such fond memories of San Jose State. I think everyone who works in high tech should go back to their college and speak. It's an eye opening experience. They need more money to upgrade equipment (the photojournalism students, for instance, were still using lenses purchased when I was in college and the broadcast students were using horribly out-of-date equipment).

The students were very interested in the Tablet PC. They asked "why aren't they available at the college bookstore?"

That's an EXCELLENT question! See, they might have out-of-date equipment, but San Jose still teaches the value of a good question. When I get back to Microsoft's headquarters I'm gonna march over to Peter Loforte's office and ask him.

By the way, I've already become a fan of Dennis' photo blog. You can follow along. He gives his students an assignment every day. And puts the assignment (and a bunch of other cool thoughts about photojournalism) on his blog.

Some things I told them:

1) Read Dan Gillmor's book, We the Media.

2) Learn Pubsub, Feedster, Technorati, and Bloglines.

3) Protect your credibility ruthlessly. Go to jail to protect your sources, for instance. And all the other stuff you learn in journalism school.

4) Make friends with the smart students. You know the ones. They don't drink a lot of beer, they hang out in the library on weekends instead of the pub, but they are more likely to get jobs after graduating and, if they like you, are more likely to bring you along for the ride.

5) Stay up to date on the bleeding edge. I showed off Flickr and Text America and called up Cameron O'Reilly of G'day World on Skype. Many hadn't heard about podcasting.

6) I showed off Weblogs.com and Scripting.com and explained how Dave Winer and Dori Smith got me into blogging. I also showed them how Dave Winer bootstrapped the tech blogosphere.

7) I showed them memeorandum and Technorati (and Google and a few other) news pages and explained that that's the future of news aggregators.

There was a lot more, too, but I have to get some sleep. What a satisfying day! Great geek dinner too.

12:06:11 AM    comment 

February 2005
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
    1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28          
Jan   Mar

Blogroll
(On Bloglines)
Blogroll
(From NewsGator)
Photoblog
(On TextAmerica)
Naked Conversations
(Book blog)
Main Feed
Link Blog
Microsoft's Channel9
Comment Feed
Referer Page


Click here to visit the Radio UserLand website.

Click to see the XML version of this web page.


© Copyright 2005
Robert Scoble
rscoble@microsoft.com
My cell phone: 425-205-1921
Are you with the press?
Last updated:
5/11/2005; 1:02:57 AM.

Robert Scoble works at Microsoft (title: technical evangelist). Everything here, though, is his personal opinion and is not read or approved before it is posted. No warranties or other guarantees will be offered as to the quality of the opinions or anything else offered here.


Be the first to comment! Free real-time blog alerts via MSN Messenger, mobile, or email.
Technorati search