Hot, Naked Geeks
Listening to a Gillmor Gang awhile back, Doc Searls stopped the discussion and said something to the effect of “...and we’re a bunch of geeks talking to a bunch of listeners who are geeks.” He also said something about “…us doing alot of navel gazing.” While I’d bet that the listeners are somewhat beyond just a geek crowd — and that the Gillmor Gang have navels worth gazing at — he nonetheless made valid points.
This next generation of the internet will only succeed if the message is carried beyond just those who are in-the-know or in-the-Valley.
There are about 100 blogs that I follow every day. Many of those are thought leaders in the tech space and many are not. There are people with valuable opinions and perspectives who happen to live, say, in Boston or Atlanta, and don’t show up on the radar screens of the cognoscenti.
I also follow techmemeorandum and Topix among others. So imagine my surprise when seemingly every blogger who was at the invite-only TechCrunch book party for Robert Scoble and Shel Israel’s book “Naked Conversations” wrote about it and linked to one another. It was quite a love-fest.
One could argue that having this blog book out there is carrying the message. Valid argument…but I’ve already heard from people that I’ve
asked to follow techmemorandum questioning “What’s up with THAT?” (meaning all the navel gazing buzz around the party and all the cool things that happened there).
I was goofin’ with Photoshop over lunch today and thought it might be humorous to re-purpose something I did before, add a new photo of Robert and Shel and put together a People magazine parody. My point is that — outside of the Valley or a closely knit circle — most of humanity doesn’t have a clue and many are going about their merry way building the next Skype in some place like Estonia.
UPDATE: Hot, Naked Geek pics here.
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About Steve Borsch
Strategist. Learner. Idea Guy. Salesman. Connector of Dots. Friend. Husband & Dad. CEO. Janitor. More here.
Connecting the Dots Podcast
Podcasting hit the mainstream in July of 2005 when Apple added podcast show support within iTunes. I'd seen this coming so started podcasting in May of 2005 and kept going until August of 2007. Unfortunately was never 'discovered' by national broadcasters, but made a delightfully large number of connections with people all over the world because of these shows. Click here to view the archive of my podcast posts.
hilarious cover, Steve! but would it sell in Minnesota?
can’t see the ice fisherman taking that one out to
read in their fish houses 🙂
great point: the navel-gazing runs rampant
meantime, good stuff is getting built — here, there, and everywhere…beyond the Valley
its so damn cold here, who has time for anything else?
Heh, the Gillmor Gang started podcasting ABOUT their navel-gazing nature? It’s time to shut them off and listen to This Week in Tech, dude.
Thanks Graeme and Nick.
Graeme: there are naked geeks here. God forbid they get naked though! Yeah…I know stuff is getting built everywhere. But the love fest isn’t just a book party, it’s much more than that.
Nick: Agreed. I’ve been a TWiT’er from day one. Was a Screen Savers guy before TechTV got them away from their geek roots and toward mainstream non-geekdom so I wasn’t learning much anymore.
I couldn’t agree with you more Steve. I actually touched on this in an earlier post to a small degree; it really is sickening sometimes to the point that I’ve stopped reading some of their stuff. blah blah blah
I’m back in school now but look forward to a East Coast revival in the future lol. Peace.
It may be navel gazing, but it seems there are more navels to gaze at every month that passes by us.