Arianna Huffington in Conversation with Tim O'Reilly
Arianna Huffington in Conversation with Tim O'Reilly
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Tim did a great job to engage Adrianna in conversation.
Adrianna connected with the audience. Her audience engagement is in keeping with the engaged community around the huffington post.
It just shows that in Web 2.0 you really have to walk the talk otherwise the audience will detect a phony. Adrianna is no phony.
She's Greek ;-)
She gave me some hope for the future of journalism.
Speaking of NOT being a blowhard! I love that the Truth wins out!! Gives hope that the People's voice can and will be heard and will continue to grow! Great session because it seemed personal and intimate ... just sitting on couches Talking!
This format is always a pleasure to watch. Arianna is a great speaker too so it sounded natural.
I've said it before and I'll say it again I don't think this conference should be used as a political platform. It is not what I spent my money for, it was not billed that way and while she also has a lot to say about social media, she is a very extreme and directional person and everyone is very clear on her political stance, and it is completely inappropriate to put her on the stage to wax and opine unless you give others the same platform. I am an independent and as far as I am concerned, this entire election is a travesty. But at least if you are going to put high profile political figures up there, you need to be objective and put others with equally polarizing points of view in the other direction.
Stephanie -
I agree that I should have tried harder to rein Arianna in when she got off on her political rant. After the session, I found myself still with too many unanswered questions about how Huffpost works. But at the same time, her passion and her opinionated nature was also something that should be illuminating for would-be new-media entrepreneurs. That's why I compared her to Rupert Murdoch (which she didn't like) - both know how to engage passionate readers with a strong point of view. Michael Arrington over at Techcrunch does this in tech - he is quite willing to stir the pot.
And so while this might have seemed inappropriate, it was actually an object lesson in what works.
As to your comment that this whole election is a travesty, that's what people said in 2000 too, and that election was a turning point in the history of our country. It does matter who we elect, and what policies we support, and what kind of character the candidates have. I really meant what I quoted in my keynote: "Bad politicians are elected by good people who don't vote." And that, quite frankly, is why I decided I have an obligation to speak out to urge people to get involved.
Once again, I have to agree with Stephanie with her first point about NOT using the keynotes and speakers as a political platform. When Tim started nudging her to talk about her political beliefs and how the Huffpost reports on true news...I almost walked out. I am sure I am not alone with this: Tim, please keep your political beliefs off the stage and in your private circles. Just because you have 5k people listening to what you have to say (about Web 2.0) does not mean you can use that time to influence them in one direction or the other.
can't say much. have never read the huffington, and it was a little bit difficult to follow along on some of the things Arianna talked about.
I don't remember "nudging" Arianna to talk about "true news" - I'd never heard that idea before. As I recall, the political discussion came pretty directly out of a question about how Huffpost has become so influential. Arianna described how she takes a strong position. I remarked that this was blurring the boundary between editorial and news, and compared her to Rupert Murdoch in that respect.
She took issue with that description, and explained how she saw herself as very different from Murdoch. That's where the "true news" discussion came in.
And while it's true that if I were of a different political persuasion, I might have cut Arianna off, it does strike me that understanding how she thinks about what she does is in fact illuminating for anyone trying to have similar impact - regardless of what political position you take.
The whole point of having someone like Arianna on stage is to get inside the head of someone who is remarkably successful. When Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg had Rupert Murdoch on stage at D a few months ago, everyone wanted to hear how the thought, and what he thought about. And that wasn't limited to narrow tech issues.
So when Arianna reveals how she guides her editorial operation, there are lessons there for people of any political persuasion.
I'm sorry if you thought it was too much.
But it does strike me as a bit odd that in the world of blogging and social media, we celebrate frank, uncensored commentary from companies, yet here, when you had that on stage, you'd rather have it carefully compartmentalized. I learned a lot from the conversation with Arianna, and I bet most of the audience did too.
While this might be a little off-track from the pro-con of political beliefs being shared during the session, I wanted to point people to an interesting report on HuffingtonPost, by veteran journalist Thomas B. Edsall, about deep data and its impact on recent and upcoming elections: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/20/ground-war-obama-and-the_n_127981.html
I mention this story because
a) I believe it could be particularly relevant to this audience
b) It showcases a point Arianna made late in the session about the requirement for facts to back up claims made on HuffPo.
Awesome! Awesome! Awesome! Great job having Arianna speak here. She is an amazing woman and it was great to hear what she had to say.