New video: CEO’s Gone WILD!!
BW Online | August 9, 2004 | Blogging for Business. If anyone thinks that the corporate lawyers and the PR folks are going to let a bunch of CEO’s go jack-wacky on personal blogs, they’re nuts. In this puff-piece, the web log of Jon Schwartz, pony-tailed ersatz CEO of Sun Microsystems, is highlighted as some sort of uber-blogging tour-de-force.
Some six weeks later, he’s a firm believer that a blog — which generally consists of diary-like entries that are posted to the Web — is a must-have tool for every executive. “It’ll be no more mandatory that they have blogs than that they have a phone and an e-mail account,” Schwartz says. “If they don’t, they’re going to look foolish.”
The clamming up at the Microsoft blogs is a case in point. If anyone thinks that Jon Schwartz’s Sun Micorosystems blog is ad-libbed and casual, they are dreaming. Here’s the kind of “personal” insight you can expect to read on this miserable blog:
If you’re an ISV, it’s time to qualify your apps to Solaris running our new Opteron systems, to make sure you tap into the broadscale opportunity we’re beginning to see as we build our way into the $20B x86 server market. It’s all upside for Sun, broadening the reach of Solaris/Sparc into Solaris/AMD and Solaris/Intel – and it’s all upside for you, too.
How endearing.
The Dvorak IPO
Maybe a new title will surface. Blog Executive Officer John C. Dvorak. The BEO will run a virtual corporation, he can do an IPO, run up the stock and bail out before gravity comes into play. I could see the media coverage unfolding.
Dvorak Blog is expected to open at $115 a share, blog could be worth $6 billion and after a year it could be valued as high as $12 billion with double digit growth from banner ads. BEO John C. Dvorak says, “I never thought of selling the blog, but the IPO creates a great investment opportunity to take part in the growth of the Dvorak Uncensored Blog.” Dvorak will be featured in Playboy this week, with the start of a new feature called InfoPorn. Dvoraks’ new InfoPorn site is currently operated out of a basement in Orange County, CA, in a partnership with Jeremys Cool Hacker Blog Inc. and Bloogle a San Jose startup also doing its own IPO. Dvorak has issued illegal stock, which the SEC is looking into and Jeremy was recently caught hacking into a U.S. DoD server. A source close to BEO Dvorak says, “He’s had problems and Jeremy is grounded, but it shouldn’t hurt the stock value.” One Wall Street insider claims that Dvorak could head for the mid $130 range by next spring, “I’ve put all my top clients in it.” BEO Dvorak is running a stock server at his blog and investors can buy the stock using the patented Dvorak Direct Stock Server which was developed in partnership with bBay of Seattle, a new division of Starlucks Coffee, a $75 Billion company that is building a new space shuttle called Java One.
I’m not sure if this guy has blog, but I like his idea.
Kurt Yeager, president and CEO of EPRI
Yeager says, “For instance, development and full deployment of a modern ‘smart’ electricity system in the U.S. would cost the average household less than $5 per month. This cost could be offset many times over by immediate reliability and efficiency improvements. In fact, modernizing the electricity infrastructure could translate into at least $3 trillion per year in additional U.S. GDP by 2025.”
A truly smart power system would include automated capabilities to optimize its own performance, anticipate problems, find robust solutions, and heal itself instantaneously without the need for outside intervention. Such a system would deliver the high-quality power needed by sensitive digital technologies while giving consumers much more control over their electricity use. Read on @
http://www.epri.com/corporate/discover_epri/news/2004/081104_roadmap.html
I just listened to some suit onthe TV talking about more blackouts, higher rates and some blather about the demand for profits. Giving consumers much more control sounds good. $5 a month, this is fantasy land. Here’s to light, life and liberty. The current power grid is dumb, expensive and out of date. Just look at California and how Enron screwed the whole state over. In our state, some company is mining coal from under citizens homes and the homes are cracking apart under the people. There’s a demand for profits! There’s a demand for crack cocaine too.
Though I’m late to the blog, and though I don’t always agree with you, I’ve always liked reading your writing style, John. I’ve added you to my blogroll as well as my RSS reader and will follow this blog regularly.
I’ll also continue to enjoy you via PC Magazine where I have had a subscription for some time.
Thanks for changing your mind and starting a blog! 😉
I’ve always stayed away from corporate blogs as I don’t think they represent a true view of the company or its products. The blog from Sun Microsystems is a great example. Instead of opening a topic for discussion or talking about some other important issue, these blogs have become nothing more than a new avenue to advertise and talk about how great the company is.
Instead, I enjoy finding personal blogs written by people inside a company. Sometimes anonymity can provide a refreshing truthfulness, or at least a view that isn’t required to be positive about the company all the time.
Also, thanks to Mr. Dvorak for starting a blog. I just found out about it and have enjoyed reading everything thus far. He is the only industry expert in which I have found myself agreeing with everything he writes.
Bravo! I like to hear realistic assessments of blogging. I’m so tired of the breathless idiots touting the necessity of blogging, the death of traditional media blah blah blah.
All they do is regurgitate what the media feeds them, with vacuous opinion thrown in.