Video Good, Yahoo Bad

The evening was dramatically entitled “Media Predicts 2008!” and so with great anticipation I accompanied several Access staff and clients (Disney, PayPal and Intuit) to our sponsored table at the Silicon Valley PRSA dinner at the Computer History Museum. Although the attire was black tie optional, there was more Abercrombie than Armani on display. Another only in San Francisco feature, was that we were entertained during the cocktail hour with the musical stylings of “Off the Record” a band compromised of journalists who seemed to have a better time at their mics than at their keyboards.

With great anticipation, hundreds of us waited to hear the wise words of journalistic luminaries that included Victoria Barret from Forbes, Don Clark of The Wall Street Journal Jim Goldman of CNBC, Rob Hof of BusinessWeek, Robert Scoble of the highly influential blog Scobleizer, and Kara Swisher, co-executive editor of The Wall Street Journal. While there were no stunning revelations about future predictions, the panel was thoroughly engaging and caustically funny, and provided an excellent reminder to the PR folks in the room that we are very lucky to have the opportunity to interact with such lively intellectuals who are sadly frequently inundated by poor pitches (Note: Clark claimed to get 100s of pitches a day, many of which should have been directed to other writers at the paper or were just not good. Tip of the day: do not pitch him on one company but on multiple companies that support a compelling trend.)

The friendly combative exchange between the journalists was intriguing. Swisher (who refuses to read or participate in anything that is traditional media) and Scoble (who is adamant that video is the next dimension of communications) punctuated their commitment to new media by using their cell phones to video record the panel responses for use on their blogs.

Other unconventional moments included multiple very, very disparaging comments about Yahoo. Comments ranged from the observation that Yahoo made the biggest mistakes in 2007 and needed to fix things fast, to the prediction that Yahoo will get acquired in 2008. What made these comments especially bold (and a tad uncomfortable for the audience) was the fact that Yahoo was the supreme sponsor of the event and had a very large version of its logo posted on the wall behind the journalists and a large table of guests right in front of the panel. (Note to PRSA: recommend that in future you remind the panelists who the sponsors are in advance of the session.)

By the way, very big shout out to Swisher who held nothing back and entertained us with comments like “Of course we are going to cover the green revolution like the ridiculous sheep that we are”, as well as calling Google (in what was supposed to be a compliment) “the Pablo Escobar of the tech industry”.   

For those who didn’t have the opportunity to enjoy the evening (with surprisingly tasty catering), stay tuned for my next posting, Tuesday (the 11th)