The Shel Israel interview went ahead last night, as planned. Shel was great, full of warm humour, interesting insights and relevant anecdotes. below are the questions I asked him and the times in the podcast they were asked:
Shel, what is it about Ireland that appeals to you? – 1:15
You guys wrote Naked Conversations right out there in the open – as you completed each chapter of the book, you published it online – what was it like writing a book as transparently as you guys did with Naked Conversations? – 2:30
Most people have read the book now online, will they buy it? – 5:50
If you were writing another book, would you do it online? – 6:30
Given that very few Irish companies have started blogging yet, why should a company have a blog? – 7:28
What are the advantages of blogging to a business? – 8:40
What advice would you give to business bloggers to help them become become successful – 11:50
Companies can be afraid of being open in their blogs (what if our competitors are reading the blog) and are afraid of what will be said in the comments – how do you deal with these fears? – 15:11
If I am a developer, how can I see what people are saying about my application/product? – 17:55
What do you see as the benefits of Podcasts/videocasts to businesses? – 23:30
How is a podcast/videocast of use to smaller companies (smaller than Microsoft!)? – 25:25
So blogs/podcasts/videocasts are about humanising companies? – 27:50
You have recently blogged that you are going to start writing about startups – what aspect of startups most interests you? – 32:30
What challenges do startups face today that they didn’t 25 years ago? – 34:30
Brian Greene’s question:
There are 40,000 blogs updates every hour of the day. How am I to read all that? seriously hasn’t blogging just added to the textual data smog that make it easier for government to bury the truth, making facts harder to come by? 37:30
You can listen to the podcast of this discussion here.
Very interesting and well conducted interview. As I am new to blogging it inspires me to further drive it into my business/privat world and share and utilise the knowledge our global community.
Shels view on startups are positive and I share his feeling about the positive tendency towards startups in today’s business world.
About “Government to bury the truth� I can see where he comes from but have never been to paranoide about the “conspiracy� aspect of information and technology, I’d rather embrace it.
Tom thanks for being such a visionary. Funky music selection after the interview, so don’t turn of when you stay on your pc.
Quick clarification – I discussed Roland’s comment (above) with him by Skype IM only to discover that the funky music he mentioned was from tracks already on his iPod!
I was wondering ‘cos I knew I didn’t remember putting music on the podcast!
New to iTunes and blogging – and embracing/confusing Tom for his great music collection – even though it was my archive playing in the background – we learn something new every day. It can only get better – maybe the music part is an interesting one to for the future?
Music would be a great addition Roland – unfortunately, there are copyright implications to be considered there and monies to be paid to recording artists if their music is played!
Wow. Great podcast. I’ve added it to my iTunes.
Thank you.