Sometimes things go wrong. No matter what the reason is – they go wrong. One thing that went wrong was the attempt of Tim O’Reilly at the Web 2.0 expo to speed up his discussion with Jonathan Schwartz by plegging the audience to ask their questions via Twitter:
In the Jonathan Schwartz interview at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco
yesterday, I screwed up. After learning we weren’t set up for audience
Q&A with microphones, I thought, "well then, I’ll just suggest to
the audience that they twitter questions @timoreilly, and I’ll check my
phone during the interview." I kept checking, but no questions. Bummer.
Not till I heard complaints afterwards that I hadn’t asked any of the questions did I do a little digging, and discover that I had twitter set to show me only @ replies from people I’m following. Bad idea.
[ Missed Twitter Questions from Jonathan Schwartz Interview at Web 2.0 Expo ]
I honestly respect Tim O’Reilly for the way he handles this. First he posts his mistake on the blog. Second he asks Jonathan Schwartz those questions he missed via email. Third he posts all the questions and Jonathan’s answers on the O’Reilly radar blog.
And I really consent to the following question of Dieter Rappold and the response of MrSun Jonathan Schwartz:
Sierralog : Question to Jonathan: Did you ever assess the success of you corporate blogging in terms of "ROI" and if so, how? Thx
MrSun:
No. It just seemed like an IQ test. If I talk, people that are
interested listen. If I don’t speak up, they have nothing to hear.
That’s the power of honesty and authenticity. That’s what companies should internalize how corporate culture should manifest. And how corporate culture should be. Not only externally but internally too.