If you were given a chance to stand face-to-face with Bill Gates and ask him any one question, what would that be ?Why is Windows Vista so much like Mac OS X ? Where is Ray Ozzie these days ? What's cool - Zune or iPod ? When will MSN AdCenter launch globally ?
Will be a very tough thing to do when you are in proximity of the richest man on this planet who's also a great philanthropist and most influential businessman of all times.
After a group of elite bloggers met this great personality, Todd Cochrane was disappointed since, according to him, none of the bloggers posed any tough questions for Mr Bill.
Scoble and Mike, Bloggers extraordinaire, who have lot of experience meeting industry leaders and celebrities, make some thoughtful and good comment on this whole episode.
Scoble agrees that people do turn into softies when meeting with tech industry leaders but again, that's human nature:
Well, let's assume I paid your round-trip airfare, hotel, bought you nice meals, and gave you some nice swag. Wouldn't you be feeling just a little more generous toward me?Mike has a more straightforward response which comes straight from his bucket loads of experience
But, now, let's say I set it up so that every year I'd do the same thing but I'd put little hints out there that you wouldn't get to come to next year's shindig if you made any trouble.
I interview companies every day, and there is only so far you can go with the tough stuff. People just shut down or go into PR speak when you go to far.As Steve Rubel adds - "A bunch of us were overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the moment. I have never met a President of the United States but this sure felt like it for me."
I'm not concerned about not getting invited back by asking a tough question, I'm concerned that I won't get an interesting answer.
Find this article at: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/12/what-is-that-one-question-you-would.html
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
Amit, I enjoy your blog but I'm concerned that you've become a bit dreamy eyed at the concept of meeting a rich man, like the bloggers did.
So many questions spring to mind, MS - why copy when you could innovate (for 20 years!), what's your problem with open source (you're not paying), do your kids enjoy computers, have computers made the world a better place...
A hundred years from now will BG be seen as the "most influential man of all times" (tell that to Ghengis Khan, Caeser, Franklin, etc)
Written on 16/12/06 4:50 AM
How do you plan to make daily commute irrelevant
Written on 16/12/06 9:02 AM
Hmm.. I would certainly buy that. If gates had given me so much for nothing, I'd have played the role of a teletubbie too :)
Written on 16/12/06 2:26 PM