Scoble has been all humble after someone declared talking to him is like talking to Bill Gates.
I’m very honored, but that tells me my hype has way gone over the top. I haven’t done anything special. I haven’t cured cancer. I haven’t invented anything. I haven’t built a product. I don’t have the power to change your life the way a billionaire could. I haven’t written a line of code. I just write everyday about what I’m seeing and feeling.
Perhaps Bill with his access to nearly every desktop in the world and his wallet bursting with billion dollar notes could significantly change the world and make it better but I don’t read Bill’s blog (because he doesn’t have one) and I doubt if he had one he’d be linking to potential competitors, giving kudos to clever technologies no matter who made them or responding to comments. Scoble does all this and still does his day job. I don’t know was it Scoble’s influence or just a seachange in Microsoft but I can start to see humanity in Microsoft now. It is slowly becoming a company with a sense of community compared to the old Beast of Redmond persona it had. Even if Scoble didn’t have anything to do with this he has highlighted the changes and as his recent podcast with Tom Raftery showed he isn’t afraid of speaking out against evil deeds done by Microsoft.
Robert has a massive audience who he cares about, a lot of important people read him daily and debate him. In return for having such an audience he isn’t afraid to give some love back by talking about people who contact him with interesting ideas and products. His audience gives him the power to promote some great products that we may never have seen if it wasn’t for him.
I’d disagree that he hasn’t the power to change lives. He does but not on the same scale as Bill. He can promote a struggling company or individual and encourage them along on the road to success. Perhaps in the literal sense he hasn’t invented anything but what he has done is introduced the world on new ways of making contacts and doing business, he has helped companies to reinvent themselves by talking about what he thinks works. He says he hasn’t build a product, is his blog and his audience not a product of a sort?
I can’t see Bill Gates going to a pub and inviting people there for a pint. I can just see Bill Gates meet normal folk who want to hang around with him and talk about everything and anything: *Bill starts pressing the big red button on his Windows Live Utility Belt and the silent black stealth helicopters (with built-in Windows Vista technology) swoop in and whisk him away from the mob of fanboys as Ballmer throws chairs from the chopper.*
The Irish Geek Dinner with Robert Scoble is on Nov 30th. I just realised that it’s a Wednesday not a Thursday. I have lectures til 2100 on Wednesday. Dang.
NOTE: After a post that seems very brown-nosing I’ll no doubt have an anti-Scoble post out soon.
I doubt if we’ll be wrapped up by 9 though.
As I said in IM I’m facinated by the fact that the two of us got the day/date wrong.