An Echo Chamber Moment

I was teaching a class the other day and, as usual, leave time open for some questions on any topics that are of interest. Over the last several years and a zillion or so classes, meet ups, etc, they usually fall into the “how do you like Canada”, “what was Microsoft like”, and “ how can I get money for my new solar powered left nostril nose hair clipper”.  Broad categories, eh?

So, a bright young CompSci student asked the following:

“If you ran Microsoft, how would you be able to gauge if 60,000 people in general had a good feeling about your leadership.”

Not bad.

My answer was something along the lines:

“I would know that my management style was building true trust and effective leadership when Mini-Microsoft could come by my office, introduce him/herself, have a chat, and leave know the secret was safe with me.”

Oh yeah, I’m thinking, that answer is headed right out of the park; I’m high fivin this brain -o– mine. 

Or so I thought. Blank stares. They are looking at each other. Uh oh, things not looking good for moose and squirrel.  Nobody knows WTF I’m talking about and nobody in a room full of geeks has a clue who mini  is, or what the blog is all about.  30 people, zip.  I bring it up on the screen, explain it and we end up have an interesting conversation about blogs, anonymity, etc.

The point was that for all the views, press, and blogging about mini, it generally is still inside the ol echo chamber.  There are some interesting lessons here about taking certain things too seriously, making sure you get ‘outside’ data points on pretty much everything, as well as other more profound insights. I’ll leave all of that as an exercise for the reader because I have to work on my lesson plans for next week.

Enjoy your weekend.

Comments

[Dimitar Vesselinov]

I live in Bulgaria and the geeks here know about mini...At least some of them.

[Varun Mathur]

Try mentioning AJAX and "Web 2.0" next time. The response could be similar. From my experience over here at the University of Toronto, most (not all !) folks I have come across studying engineering / computer science are not geeks - they are missing the passion which elevates an engineer to a geek status. More like wilder beasts crossing the river in a rush, without much appreciation and understanding of the environment. The audience at the local DemoCamps/BarCamps is more receptive to such topics as they tend to be voracious readers.

[Matt]

It's also a question of where one's interests lie.

I don't work in Microsoft space. So I'd never heard of that blog until I saw references to it here. Likewise Scoble. "Robert WHO?"

On the other hand, it remains possible that the echo chamber represents one's primary market for readers. Nothing "mini-Microsoft" has to say is of any interest to me, and I doubt anything I'd have to say would be of interest to him, so it's not exactly a tragedy for the ages that we'd never heard of each other.