Naked Conversations

Oi! My ‘blogging break’ extended itself for so long that now, the part of my brain that files away interesting tidbits or begins composing articles while stuck on Muni, is sorely out of shape.

Seeing Robert Scoble talk today was a great kick to the head to begin blogging again. He is, as you might guess, a social and engaging chap but the most interesting thing I noted (other than he referred to Twitter.com 28 times in 90 minutes) was the dynamic between Robert and the audience of a hundred or more people. His book, and in theory, his ‘talk’, was about how blogs are changing the way businesses communicate with their customers, about how business blogs allowed customers and businesses to have an actual conversation via blogs, etc.

While Robert certainly addressed this, he also veered off into other, related areas based on the comments and questions from the audience, as you might imagine. Several people, however, seemed miffed that he didn’t stay exactly on topic, with one gent even pointedly asking ‘Back to today’s topic, what would be the first five things you’d recommend to a company set to launch a new product?’

I found that amusing and a little ironic, given that Robert’s whole spiel is about how businesses can no longer operate with information/communication flowing in one direction, but instead must engage in a conversation with consumers. Which is exactly what Robert was doing with the audience, and it made me smile that people in attendace knew enough about this changing business paradigm to attend this talk, yet they seemed to want and crave a more focused, speechy, one way flow of info from Robert to the audience.

Speaking of, now that I’ve both changed the name of my blog AND moved over to wordpress, Comments will be once again an option. So talk to me about anything other than penis enlargement, please.

Robert’s book is Naked Conversations and the above picture was nixed from mortarblog.com.