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.