On-site interview at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco where Robert Scoble discusses what he's watching at the conference (highlighting Microsoft’s new Mesh announcement), his preference for hallway networking over formal sessions, and practical tips for conference attendees—use Twitter as a backchannel, sit front row to engage, pace yourself at parties, walk exhibits selectively, and carry memorable business cards.
Questions this video answers
Web 2.0 Expo, San Francisco.
Tonight at 9pm.
Okay, we're at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. With me, I have Robert Scoble and we're waiting in line to get a press pass. So you've been traveling a lot, you go to a lot of conferences and.
This seems, I used to plan conferences too. Oh really?
Okay. And this, this, this San Francisco seems to be the epicenter of social media this week in Web City.
Yeah.
Maybe a little partying maybe, I don't know. So tell me what, what you're as far as or what are you looking forward to?
Well, I just saw Microsoft's new mesh an hour ago and that's going to be the big news this week. I think if something matches that in terms of interesting new technologies, I'd be very surprised. But that'll be announced tonight at 9pm that's certainly going to be the big thing that people are going to key in on and pay attention to. If they don't, they're not paying attention. But anything to me, anything that uses friends in a new way, like Friend Feed, certainly has my attention. Anything that uses mobile in a new way has my attention. So those are sort of what I'm going to be looking for.
Okay. And so since you do attend so many conferences and of course you have planning, conference planning experience, I'm curious if you could give a tip to people.
It's a tough one because I'm the guy who likes hanging out in the hallways. I hate being stuck in a conference session unless I know I'm going to learn something.
Well, that's where a lot of magic happens, right?
Well, to me the hallways are great because I know that's where I do my networking and find out what's really going on. Stuart Butterfield showed me Flickr in the hallways of Emerging Tech conference. Right. He didn't even have a spot on the stage. He said, hey, check this out. And typically that's been true. The more interesting stuff happens out in the hallways, unless you're at a really top rate conference like TED or Poptech, then all of a sudden it's an experience to be in the stage. So if you're going to one of. I always sit in the front row. So when I went to Davos and I went to several sessions, I always sat in the front row mostly so I can capture video and see things and participate in the conversations better and get seen if I want to ask a question. Watch Twitter. Certainly Twitter now is the back channel for a lot of these conferences and you'll see people talking, particularly in a multi Room conference where like at south by Southwest there were several things going on at one time. The Twitter stream sort of told you what other people were experiencing. And if your talk that you were in was really boring, you could switch rooms and go to the other talk that might have been much more interesting.
Sort of on demand wisdom of crowds.
Yeah, certainly having a good plan for the parties and being able to pace yourself on some of these. Certainly with south by Southwest there's so many parties that you could go until 4 in the morning every morning and you can really burn yourself out pretty fast. Here in San Francisco, it's a little harder do that, but it's still not impossible. There's so many events to go to and then have a sense of what exhibits are there and see what is getting talked up. So I would watch during the day a site like techmeme, at least if it's a tech conference, you know, watch a site like techmeme to see what other people are talking about at the conference that you might want to actually see or partner, you know, build a relationship with a business that you might end up partnering with or whatnot.
Do you ever walk the exhibit?
Yeah, but for me it's a little tough because everybody wants to get my attention, but I probably will. I probably will have some specific things that I want to see. A lot of PR people ask me to make appointments anyway, so I know I'll have to see IBM. I've already seen Microsoft stuff, so I don't need to go see their stuff. That's a good example. Right? You're going to hear a lot of hype tonight about Microsoft's new Mesh. Well, you're probably going to want to come and see that and understand why the hype, why people like me are like, whoa, that was a big deal that we saw this morning and go and see it and understand it so that at least you're. Even if you don't end up using it, at least you're educated about it and you come back from a conference and tell your boss something about it. Because if your boss is paying you to go here, you're going to want to be up to date on the latest stuff that happened here. And certainly your boss will probably hear the news about Microsoft Mesh and go, well, did you see it? What do you think? Should we use it? And you better have a good idea of what it is and some insight, right? And then if you say, yeah, we should use it, you better have four business cards of people you can partner with in Microsoft to make something happen. Right.
Okay, well, super.
Have business cards and have them be memorable. Right. A lot of people hand me business cards that I don't remember an hour later. My business cards are memorable, so if you get one of these, you'll at least remember. Oh, yeah, that's the guy with the weird business card. You know, it's not a. It's not a business card. Okay, well, great.
Well, it looks like you're up next. Thanks a lot for your time. Bye.
