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Personally I was very much looking forward to this interview -- the only time I heard Mark speak live was at TC40 which was shorter (i think longer would have been great) and most of it was an infomercial for the fbFund. I was hoping that there wouldn't be any announcements here and we could some answers on the future mostly. What's interesting is that just minutes before it started, someone came over and told me he was going to announce something big - not sure if that was the French version or if it turned out to be false.
I found the interview more awkward than anything and a bit boring. She came across as a close personal friend of Mark's and he seemed to not be having it. She cut him off a bunch in the beginning. She kept referring to "Leslie Stahl Moments" when he didn't answer her, which was not appropriate. If you know that Mark is awkward, make sure you prepare on how to deal with it ahead of time. I think Mike did a better job in this area.
She seemed to "poke fun" of Mark for having a journal that he writes things down in. I have a paper journal and Om Malik wrote a lengthy post a year ago about the value of his journal. She even did a yes-no thing with Mark about him burning the journals until she had to call out to catherine Holihan way in the back.
Mark also stuck to basically the same answer all discussion - "we are focused on our missing of communication, etc." -- this frustrated the audience I am sure. No matter the question, he responded with basically the same answer.
What's really interesting is that the first audience question was "so where are you headed with fb" and frankly that was the best question of the entire keynote.
My guess is that it was 80% poor interview, 20% mob - as once the crowd starting cheering on Mark, it seemed to take off from there. To be honest, in 17 years of attending, speaking at, moderating conferences, this was the absolute most shocking crowd reaction I've seen.
It went to all hell when she made "woh is me" comments - the professional singer keeps going on even if someone's boos. She easily could have just continued on but by feeding into the crowd by saying things like "you cant imagine how hard my job is", only fired up the crowd further.
What I don't get is why knowing how big of a fan base and follower base she has, that she didn't ask for questions on twitter or her blog beforehand.
The man is the peer of the attendees. He started a social network. SOCIAL. It's a no brainer that Sarah should have employed more of a social style of interview process with Mark and with the crowd.
I wasn't there, but got a call as soon as it was over. It *was* that bad.
Drew -- with an interview that's an hour long, to only go to the
audience for questions with about 10 minutes left just seems wrong.
I stand firm that had she asked the audience ahead of time what types of questions they'd like her to ask, things would have gone completely different.
In fact, people could have recorded questions around the event center using sponsor Kyte phones and then shown the questions in the center.
Oh well, let's all move on - 2 more days here to enjoy.
pontificating. Are bloggers only allowed to comment on things that
happened when they were physically present? I don't remember reading
that anywhere in the blogger's handbook. In any case, if my blog posts
irritate you, I encourage you to take your eyeballs elsewhere.
i've seen your "i encourage you to take your eyeballs elsewhere" response on other occasions where readers challenge you. that's a pretty lame response
unsatisfactory response or not. I think people who come to this blog
know that they will get my opinion on a variety of things -- in this
case, I provided that opinion based on my reading of new reports and
my experience as an interviewer. If that's not good enough then I
guess you need to... well, you know the rest.
breath before letting your fingers let loose with flames. if you
can't accept criticism, you'll never rise above the level of
mediocre hack
rise above the level of mediocre troll.
But what's really interesting is the role that the back channel of live blogging, Twitter etc will have played in reinforcing the audience's reaction. At tech conferences, you have an audience that is largely paying attention to their screens, rather than to what's happening on stage. This means that the reaction of the audience will be magnified, as the reaction is passed from audience member to audience member in real time.
The worst keynote I ever saw was Gil Amelio's 1997 San Francisco Macworld - two hours of dullness, enlivened only by a ten minute talk on NeXTSTEP by the newly-returned Steve Jobs. If that had been being Twittered and liveblogged as much as SXSW, I doubt Amelio would have made it out of the room alive.
happening, and may have given some of those in the audience the
impression that they were in the majority, even if they weren't.
(That sound you hear is my head going "POP" as I try and remember some Baudrilliard, who I suspect would have had something to say about this :) )
I don't really care about the interview, because I dislike Zuckerberg (given that he likely lied and/or stole code when dealing with ConnectU) and because find Facebook to be overrated... but I find the interview reaction interesting :)