Scoble leaves a comment on Jeremiah's very kind post lamenting that he cannot join me for a glass of red wine and some company. The poor guy has to fly off to London on this fine Thanksgiving morning, therefore he has declined our invitation to join us for dinner (as has Jeremiah). Meanwhile on Scoble's blog, he seems to have provoked a rematch with Amazon.com CTO Werner Vogels, with whom we had a solid bump, back when we visited the Amazon home court during the Naked Conversations book tour.
My recollection of the Vogels incident is different than either of them recount. We may have spiked sales for a few days, but it was not our finest moment together and as for Werner, I will not nominate him for Host of the Year.
But I digress.
On this day, our house will be filled with company, and as is our tradition we will go around the table, talking about what each of us has to be thankful for. When it comes my turn, I will toast Scoble, on this the eve of our second anniversary.
On the day after Thanksgiving, 2004 I flew to Seattle to pitch Robert Scoble about co-authoring a book about why business should blog. He said yes, but it was a most inauspicious start. The guy did not become engaged in the project for another month, when he told the world and me at the same time that we would blog the book right out in public, where everyone could see it.
As I have written, at the time I though the guy was Loony Tunes. I though publishers would walk away. I thought our intellectual property would be ripped off.
In fact, blogging the book was pure genius. The blog built a modest community of Naked Conversations champions. Their word of mouth contributed most significantly to the book becoming the success it has become. Bloggers also made Naked Conversations a much better book, by adding cases, telling us what did and did not work, by fact checking and even by catching the typos.
This was Scoble's genius. It not only changed our book and contributed to its success. By my last count there have been at least a dozen additional books that are being first blogged in one case or another and the authors as well as their publishers are enthusiastic about the results.
Meanwhile, I'm just thankful to Scoble for having partnered on the book with me. I greatly changed my life for the better. Robert, enjoy the UK. This is a great day to land in London. Thank those Brits for the country. Overall, we've done okay with it so far.
