the echo chamber [revisited]

I’ve always seen that car­toon as self-parody on your part — since you do a lot of “tal­king about the con­ver­sa­tion”.

Hugh — David is one of the ‘good guys’ as I’m sure you dis­co­ve­red by which I mean decent and honest.
Disc­lo­sure: He and I are occa­sio­nal busi­ness partners.

“being assi­mi­la­ted by Mic­ro­soft” Ha!
MS is being assi­mi­la­ted by Gaping­void.
hehehe

Cheers Den, and thanks for the link love Hugh! It’s a shame you’re off to SF just as Den­nis arri­ves in the UK. Maybe next time.

I think the “assi­mi­la­ted” com­ment is a result of the ‘theme of the moment’ effect of blog­ging about what is currently rele­vant and inte­res­ting to you. For a while it was almost nothing but Stormhoek, with the occa­sio­nal suit and mar­ke­ting idea. Now it is almost exc­lu­si­vely about Blue Mons­ters.
It would be great to see all of these things inter­min­gling, and spea­king to each other, offe­ring insight and advice. Easy to say, dif­fi­cult to manage, but could get around the sin­gle theme issue?

That’s a good point Hugh, although the echo cham­ber in reverse would be a far more appro­priate con­cept — the megaphone maybe?
As I men­tio­ned in my post and to Steve, the megaphone (sort of like Seth’s) con­cept allows indi­vi­duals at Mic­ro­soft, howe­ver small they may be, to have their say. I think it is a very power­ful tool of engagement.

Tho­mas, you may be right that Gaping­Void is assi­mi­la­ting Mic­ro­soft.
I had the great honor of spen­ding the entire day with Hugh yes­ter­day. One of my collea­gues at MS said after the mee­ting as he shook Hugh’s hand: “Thanks Hugh, you really roc­ked my brain around”. I think that sums it up. Hugh’s pro­bably on a plane to NYC now. What’s fas­ci­na­ting is that Hugh just ‘is’. He doesn’t wear his agenda on his sleeve and, as you point out here, his curio­sity and addi­tive approach affords him great res­pect. He ope­ned my eyes to a bunch of things. The ecosys­tem, the subt­le­ties, the no zero-sum game, heck even music refe­ren­ces.
Spea­king of music – We met with Steve Ball which I’m sure Hugh will write about it. (I took video on our camera pho­nes). A con­ver­sa­tion with Steve is a sen­sory cor­nuc­pia. Steve is res­pon­si­ble for the way that Vista greets you each day. Poor Steve, a moun­tain of talent, he’s trying to inch some of it into the millions of desk­tops and ham­pe­red by the need for Vista to be everything to ever­yone. (no elec­tric guitars…wouldn’t want to offend grandma!) Fas­ci­na­ting con­ver­sa­tion bet­ween Hugh and Steve. They con­nec­ted at so many levels con­cep­tually, musi­cally, socially, and there was this “jiffy pop” effect where they sud­dently were into a zone of thou­sand ping-pong phra­ses finishing each other’s sen­ten­ces, etc..
I have to say that the art Hugh prac­ti­ces requi­res a cer­tain ‘Mas­ter Po’ qua­lity to it. He has to help peo­ple rea­lize things on their own by asking ques­tions. You then have the chance to inter­na­lize them — own them as your own. Here, I am Grasshop­per and while many times I unders­tand what Hugh says, some­ti­mes it takes me a few hours or days to really inter­na­lize it, but it even­tually hap­pens and Hugh is pretty patient. (I think)
Hugh’s curio­sity with Mic­ro­soft comes not from anything rela­ted to ‘sell-out’ (by any means) It’s his inte­rest in the re-invention. The sim­ple models that Hugh was white-boarding with us yes­ter­day were so deep and mea­ning­ful, but so simply expres­sed. I think this sym­bio­tic rela­tionship is far tip­ped in Microsoft’s bene­fit vs. Hugh’s so you should try some dif­fe­rent words than ‘sell-out’. Maybe ‘point-out’?
Quick side­bar that made me chuc­kle (and it gives me a chance to try on some of what I’ve lear­ned). Hugh and I used the hand-manipulatable Vir­tual Earth glass table). The demo lets you use your hands to zoom/pan/move the 3D map and Hugh asked if this was Goo­gle Earth.
Now, shut­ting off my cheer­lea­ding ten­den­cies where I nor­mally would say: “yes! It’s Microsoft’s Vir­tual Earth which is so cool in the follo­wing ways.….“
Rather, I’m going to say: Mic­ro­soft does have a earth-to-street-level 2-D & 3-D map­ping solu­tion. The team who wor­ked on it were asked to build fea­tu­res that would be more com­pe­lling and use­ful than anything currently avai­la­ble. You can try it an see if they suc­cee­ded in doing that local.live.com. Goo­gle and Mic­ro­soft each have areas of strengths in dif­fe­rent cities. Many peo­ple are com­pa­ring dif­fe­rent cities and dis­cus­sing which they pre­fer and where. e.g. while Goo­gle has a 3d ren­di­tion of a sta­dium in San Fran­cisco, Mic­ro­soft has a detai­led view of the buil­ding in the Vegas strip. Which you pick may depend on which areas you focus on. You can see a side-by-side com­pa­ri­son at http://www.jonasson.org/maps/.
A lot of peo­ple are infec­ted with the Hugh­Train bug. Having him explain it in per­son has been even more enligh­te­ning. I think next time, we’ll just reserve a room for 500+ and broa­den the dis­cus­sion. Next trip Hugh?
HINT: Hugh’s mas­ter­plan? Every­time the blue mons­ter is expo­sed to techies through Mic­ro­soft or other chan­nels, Stormhoek’s name is embed­ded directly to its tar­get mar­ket. Mwah, ha ha! Happy to oblige, Hugh. It’s bri­lliant.
–Kris