Bb's RealTech

I missed the whole thing — jumped between 2 equally boring panels in the same time slot. (equally boring compared to one another.) And I haven't bothered to watching video. I dunno, I guess I just find Facebook entirely uninteresting. But I did sit next to several young women in the next session, and they were pretty brutal talking about the interview: the whole flirting/hair twirling thing. A friend that I was talking to earlier today, who was there, and she said it was a lousy interview, but she was uncomfortable with the crowd's reaction too. As we talked, we both agreed that there's a difference between constructive criticism and tearing someone down, and the crowd got out of control on that one.

Aside from that, I hate to think that will probably be the best known event at this year's SXSWi. So depressing! When there's other things so much better, more interesting, more meaningful. (The keynote today, for example; the postscript guy is fantastic. Admission: I cried.)

I hear you about the hair-twirling. I am a hopeless fidget. OTOH, I would think that you'd be extra-careful about those sorts of tendencies if you're doing a big interview in front of a ginormous audience. When I was in high school and did speeches as part of Academic Decathlon, the coach required me to take off all my jewelry before I went in. I wore a lot of jewelry then, too.

But I do just find the whole thing entirely boring. Crummy interviews happen; sometimes people are mean. ::shrug::

Hair-twirling is not automatically equivalent to a mating move. But …
a) it sometimes is a mating move
b) more importantly, in an adversarial situation, it's sometimes a simulated mating move for manipulative purposes

Doing something which could be interpreted as a flirting move (even if it's just a tic) in an interview will draw a negative reaction from some people - male and female. This is not a sexism issue but rather a media-training issue.

Boring indeed. I should stop 'following' Scoble on Twitter, it is just not interesting. Though I was curious enough to look up Lacy's twitter response. Liked that

Lacey is a print journalist. I'm not sure why they thought having a print journalist do this interview was a good idea.

Having said that, I look at that video and I have to wonder how much of the hostility was based on Lacey's sex. I don't care about the interview, and I certainly don't care about Facebook, but I concerned when I see almost excessive hostility and believe that the same level would not have been displayed if Lacey was, say, Scoble.

Rijk, I didn't think there was enough time in the day to follow Scoble on Twitter.

As for SxSW, I read a few other people talking about good panels, but most of it was chatter about parties. I think that SxSW is now attracting too many people just looking for the center of attention, rather than people like you Elaine, who are genuinely interested.

I appreciate the compliment, although some of my lack of party chatter is the simple fact that I'm an old lady in some ways, and would often rather be comfy in bed watching a documentary than wandering around in a (surprisingly chilly!) bar trying to strike up conversation over loud music.

I should also add that since I'm being paid to be here, I take my responsibility to the credit union's members pretty seriously. I'm here to learn and to connect. Some connecting (and surprisingly/occasionally some learning) comes from fun stuff, but that's not the center of things.

I've been avoiding this controversy until now, but one aspect surprised me: Sarah Lacy was hand-picked by Facebook to do the interview, and according to Brian Solis said afterward, "At the end of the day if Mark looked good then that's all that matters to me."

I'm not clear on why a BusinessWeek columnist would lend her credibility, and that of her publication, to a PR stunt disguised as an interview.

But if she's going to put on a show designed to make a tech exec look good, the number of times she turned the focus on herself and her book seems pretty inept.

If you're perched on the fence about whether Lacy's backlash is at all fueled by sexism, a fake SXSW transcript by author Paul Carr ought to settle the matter.

SL: "Ok, well, I guess I should have let you make that announcement, gosh darn I'm so ditzy (giggles). So what's it like to be rich and to have journalists, like, really want to sleep with you?"

MZ: "It's just not something I'm focussed on right now."

SL: "How about if I do this?"

(Lacey begins to fellate Zuckerberg but, remarkably, is able to keep talking….)

SL: "Well, sure, that makes it so much easier."

(Three rows of fat guys at the front of the room orgasm as one at the incredible comedic timing of Mark 'Bill Hicks' Zuckerberg as Lacey switches position for a reach around.)

I thought it was just a lame canned interview until she started arguing with the audience over whether it was a lame canned interview. At that point she became the antagonist, defending canned interviews.

Did people really expect this to be a true interview?

Yes. Zuckerberg is known for saying things he shouldn't (from a PR perspective), so people (like me) expected him to do more of that. And he did, only the things he let leak were about how canned the interview was, not what Facebook is doing.

I guess there is one born every minute.

This is unnecessarily insulting.

So, I'm watching the interview right now.

About 13 minutes in, there was a pretty decent flow going when Mark was talking about building platforms for more efficient communication reducing the need for organizational centralization, and Sarah derails it with a demeaning reference to his age and swiping his announcement about the French version.

Over the next 15-20 minutes, she asks some tough questions, but then mostly lets him slide with evasive answers and doesn't really follow up.

Around 32 minutes, she starts focusing on the valuation, and he starts repeating his platform story and downplaying the valuation. For whatever reason *this* is when she starts acting like a dog with a bone, and won't let go. But to this crowd, this whole segment is mostly a pointless digression.

Around 40 minutes, she makes a statement that isn't really a question, which lets him retreat into a one-word answer. The crowd is no longer finding these interactions cute or amusing. The question about the 'token grownup' is yet another demeaning age reference.

Asking him about the token grownup's challenges as a woman in a male dominated company is sort of pointless. Not that it's a bad question per-se, but he's the wrong person to ask.

Some softball questions on company culture and the role of CEO, but not bad, actually, and she gets interesting responses. Cool.

Things start to go *really* wrong around 49 minutes when Mark quips that she should ask a question. Audience enthusiasm. Sarah's comeback about throwing water on Arrington is not well received.

The whole notebook thing where she digresses into trying to get 3rd-party confirmation (in effect, only involving the audience to support *her* agenda) is a really bad move, because it opened the door to the serious heckling. Sure, the heckler was being rude, but she gave him the opening.

She then gets completely defensive and adversarial with the audience. Another bad move.

The dig from the audience member about 'rough interviews' was obviously hostile, but she chose to confront the guy instead of letting it slide. His choice to then escalate and dismiss her even more rudely may have been in part about her gender, but that's the first point that suggests that to me, and it's right at the end.

Some comments:

Lacy's interviewing technique is definitely geared toward being able to edit the quotes into an article later, rather than having a public conversation. This is, in a sense, a performance art, as difficult in it's way as stand-up comedy, and she does not have the chops, although that would come with practice. To get that practice, she needs to do a lot more on-camera interviews that she can edit and get to the point where she doesn't *have* to edit.

Crucial point: The idea of an informal interview is mostly about form rather than content. In print she can cut the informal content out and leave the meat but she doesn't have that luxury on stage. The audience found the informal content boring and I think this got misattributed to her informal *style* and her body language (this sort of misattribution is very common, and works both ways).

Her comment in the later interview on being one of the few women in tech journalism is certainly true, but there are others who are better at it (or at least better at this aspect of it). Example: Kara Swisher.

I don't care for Lackey's interview techniques, but that's not her thing. She's not a "live" journalist. I'm not impressed that she agreed to allow herself to be part of a PR move. Rogers, it does sound like this was orchestrated by Facebook PR, and was supposed to focus on business.

However, I do believe if she was a guy, she wouldn't have had the flack she did. And no, I didn't see any flirting. I did see a strong attempt to make this into an informal conversation between "friends", which I thought was not smart.

The only person I've been able to see do this well is Tim O'Reilly, and that's because he typically only has these things with people who _are_ friends.

Scott, I don't think it was insulting. I do think people need to stop taking these things at face value. And that includes the Guy/Ballmer "interview", too.

Look what happened with the Stormhoek thing, and people taking this at face value?

Michael, your points are good. She did get defensive at the end, the journal thing was dumb–but, it didn't help that Zuckerberg challenged her on this when she was already starting to feel out of touch. Yes, Kara is better than Lackey. Better than most of the guys lambasting Lackey, too.

There's no way in heck Facebook's PR team would let Kara within a mile of Zuckerberg.

At a minimum, Lackey did what she was contracted to do. A whole lot of people screwed up with this, but the audience has to accept that they acted like 4 year olds, having to go to the potty.

Sarah Branton has some constructive analysis and advice, and Kara Swisher has her own perspective.

Yes, Kara is better than Lackey. Better than most of the guys lambasting Lackey, too.

Shelley, I hope you're using 'guys' in the generic sense. I see criticism from women too (and SXSW probably has one of the least male-dominated audiences among tech conferences).

Yes, Kara Swisher is a better live interviewer than pretty much anyone else who has commented. Yes, FB PR would never have chosen her. The fact that they did choose Lacy is not really a compliment to her under these circumstances. My point is that Lacy does not get to respond to deserved professional criticism with 'but I'm a woman', implying that this should confer some sort of immunity.

BTW, you mis-spelled Lacy's name. Interesting typo, though.

This is hardly the first time attendees have revolted at conferences. It's going to happen with greater frequency. It's going to start happening at non-technical conferences. In a decade or so, it may happen at a presidential primary debate.

The people formerly known as the 'audience' are flexing their muscles and leveraging ad-hoc backchannels at their disposal, and anyone getting up on a stage had better be aware that this is going on.

There was another instance at SXSW where this happened.

I watched the interview and, like you, thought she came across fine. As a result, I now like Lacy. More so, because of her unfair treatment afterward. The problem was the venue. Her interview was more suited for an evening half hour on CNBC without the audience. I think I'd enjoy watching Lacy more than CNBC's Maria Bartiromo.