Meet Robert Scoble

Posted on February 11, 2005 at 01:38 AM

Robert's web log was one of the first I started reading way back when I first discovered this whole blogging thing. It was through him and his blog roll I discovered other blogs out in the "blogosphere". When I first started this blog I wanted to add a blog roll, but didn't want to put any of the "A-list" bloggers on it because I figured that everyone read/knew about them. You know, the usual suspects: Dave Winer, boing boing, Jason Kottke, John Battelle, endgadget, gizmodo, wonkette, instapundit (I could go on for a while trust me). But I figured why hold back information from someone who could have been like me was when I first started out, new to the whole scene and not knowing where to find other blogs. Because of all of this I include a link to his site on my blog roll.

Robert is an employee of Microsoft, his official title is Technical Evangelist (no I didn't make that up, that is his title) He puts a human face on Microsoft by interviewing internal Microsoft project teams, telling us what they are working on and why it will be cool when they are done. His blog is not endorsed by Microsoft. No one from Microsoft approves his posts for correct content or message. He doesn't even blog on company time. He does all this because he is passionate about the company he works for.

So what's so cool about him?

He and a friend of his, Shel Israel, are writing a book about blogging. It's entitled "The Red Couch". The name comes from the red couch sitting in his office where so many people have stopped by to chat about what's going on at Microsoft and technology in general. What's truly unique about the book they're writing is that they started a blog with the intent of recording in the public eye the process of writing this book and to bounce their ideas off of their readers.

You know a guys got juice when you read about how Mark Jen, the ex-google blogger, getting fired, and a few days later Robert is having dinner with the guy and blogging about the experience.

He also does quite a bit of public speaking about blogs. Whether it's in front of future journalists at his alma mater or at a blog conference imparting upon others his passion for blogs. For example, last month he spoke at the Business Blog Summit. His keynote was about blogging, it's past, it's future, and why it isn't going away anytime soon.

Since I have plenty of bandwidth to burn I thought I would provide a copy of that keynote in mp3 format for you to download here [via Business Blog Summit] If you are interested in blogging or not sure what blogging is actually all about and want to learn more, then I urge you to download the mp3 to your iPod, computer, pda, or whatever and listen to what he has to say.

One more interesting thing, quite daring actually, is that he puts his cell phone number on the front page of his blog so people can call him. I should give him a call some time to see if he answers.

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