[My favorite cartoon from the event- drawn on my Tablet PC.]
I was sitting in Row Four at Techcrunch Disrupt SF last week, where my old friend Michael Arrington interviewed Mark Zuckerberg, the latter’s first since the Facebook IPO [Techcrunch video here].
For all the hype (and the security guards keeping everybody back), it wasn’t my favorite interview of the event, by any means. In spite of Arrington’s as-usual excellent questions (He’s pretty much my favorite “journalist” in the world these days, tech or otherwise), Zuckerberg obviously didn’t have a lot to say that he hadn’t said already.
Only one thing he said really stayed with me… and I thought it was quite good, actually:
Namely, that Facebook is a Mission-focused company. They have a mission, that is their priority. The actual business and the share price (and the money, even) are truly secondary.
“The Mission” being, in this case, “to connect the world”.
So even if, yeah, the post-IPO share price is disappointing to many investors, The Mission is alive and well and carrying on nicely. So it’s not like the investors weren’t told…
No argument there. The world is WAY more connected than it was even five years ago and yes, Facebook deserves a lot of the credit.
[The only other thing Zuckerberg said of any interest was that yeah, Facebook is going to get much more involved with mobile- just like the rest of the web. But again, no surprises there.]
I really liked Zuckerberg’s emphasis on “Mission”. Like Mark Earl’s Purpose-Idea, goals are easier to reach when you turn up to work, day-in-day-out, knowing what they actually are. Otherwise you just get lost in office politics and going to meetings.
[Relevant cartoon from a year ago etc.]
So what’s the gapingvoid MISSION? To bring art to the business world, basically. Which is exactly what we’ve been doing these last few years. Compare our work to what you usually see when you google “Office Art”. All the latter seems to offer is REALLY bland stuff, with only massive discounts to differentiate themselves from the next guy.
Not fun or interesting. So we’re going to change that. Yes, we are.
Bring art to the business world. You heard it here first, People. Rock on.
