I ended up writing this long-a** response to this, regarding the majority response of “EPIC FAIL” to the Zuckerburg Keynote at South By Southwest 2008, defending Sarah Lacey’s handling of the interview.
Short version of the drama; Lacey handled the interview somewhat unprofessionally, Zuckerburg gave very short responses to ambiguous questions, the Twitter-verse had a field day, and then the heckling began.
Controversial? Possibly. Will be relevant in 5 years? Probably not…
The interview itself was mediocre at best, getting a 23 yr. old billionaire to open up to you onstage by twirling one’s hair and giggling like school girl must be hard work indeed for one of the Valley’s Smoking Foxes; however it’s actually her response that rubs me the wrong way.
If she honestly believes that there were things that she could have done better – saying that she’s one of the “one of the only women reporting on tech” and it’s “the price of being high profile”, don’t cut it. The way that she responded to the Keynote audience and post-interview… interviews do not speak to her ability as a Reporter and using her “unusual style” of (extremely flirtatious) interviewing? She could have handled all of the above with a bit more grace and professionalism.
Appealing to the sexual nature of a young gent who’s already been a tough nut to crack as an interviewee? As a member of the female gender myself, frankly, it was embarrassing. Like a high school cheerleader trying to get the star football player to ask her to the prom.
I appreciate the people (like yourself) who have gone out of their way to try and moderate the extremes, the people who’ve publicly gone to either Zuckerburg or Lacey and tried to get their opinion(s) on the matter. However, it doesn’t change the three major beefs I’ve had with both the interview and the aftermath –
a) Lacey didn’t know her audience – South by Southwest isn’t “Business Week” – while there are a number of people interested in the business implications of social networking; I doubt that makes up enough of the percentage to ONLY speak to that ends.
b) Interviews are about the Interviewee, not the Interviewer. Having gone back over the recordings more than once – it appears that Lacey’s “style” was to flirt with Zuckerburg; intertwine her personal feelings and experiences about new developments with Facebook and random anecdotes about herself. The ratio of content from Mark versus content from her was dismal.
- I will side note that last comment with; if Zuckerburg is really as shy as other reports indicated, his “comfortableness” with the interviewer taking more of the spotlight are probably valid -
c) the aftermath – Lacey’s comments to Omar Gallaga (Austin American-Statesman) were handled as badly as her response to the people heckling her onstage interview. She portrayed herself as a disgusted martyr saying that she’d “i made the mistake of coming to a developer conference” and that “the price of being high profile” is that she’d experienced “way worse shit on a much larger scale”
I guess the overall downside is that most people (both the judged and the judgmental) in question are going to walk away from this feeling like their sh*t doesn’t stink and they personally did nothing “wrong” to affect the situation.
Some of the questions that we really should be focusing on are: a) Do we want something like this in SxSW 2009? b) Should there be more coaching on Keynotes, Panels, “Core Conversations”, and Presentations for future SxSW(s)? c) How can we (as attendees and supporters of SxSWi) drive to make a better conference – one that’s accessible and interesting to “the high profile”, the budding (or veteran) web developer, and many people go to share in the energy and gain inspiration by simply showing up.
What, really, have we learned?
