Five Observations from My Day with Robert Scoble

I invited Robert Scoble to check out some of the companies that I met by hosting events on Mixergy.com. Yesterday he spent the day meeting six startups and shooting interviews with them for FastCompany.tv. Here are five observations from my time with him:

• Benefits of fame – Most people couldn’t get tickets to yesterday’s sold out Twiistup event, but when the organizers heard that Scoble was in town and had a few minutes to spare before his flight, they went out of their way to get him to come. He told me he got to the front of the line to buy an iPhone because a fan spotted him and asked him to join him.

• Bobble-head – If you look at some of the interviews I’ve done for Tech Zulu, you’ll see me nodding, biting my lip and just bobbing around while the person I’m interviewing talks. It’s very distracting. I watched Scoble do interviews for 5 hours and, as you can see in the picture above, after he asked a question, he’s just still. He told me it’ll take some practice. I’ll work on it.

• Constant work – After the interviews were over, I left him alone in the studio for about an hour. When I came back in to check on him, he turned it into his office–complete with a cradle for his iPhone–and was lost in work. On the drive to the airport he was on FriendFeed writing his thoughts on the PodTech sale. If he had a minute to spare, he was on twitter, writing or reading a post. When I asked him what I needed to do to be “internet famous” he told me to keep publishing everywhere. That’s what he was doing any chance he got.

• Measuring success – I asked him if he ever wanted to be as rich as the people he covered for FastCompany.tv. I think he laughed at the idea. He didn’t even seem concerned with his traffic numbers or how many people viewed his videos. He told me he measured success by how big a conversation he was starting.

• The Mixergy community is working – I know it’s self-serving to say it, but I think the tech events we’ve all done in SoCal have helped raise all of our profiles. Alana Semuels of the LA Times once told me that she’s less interested in covering a single company than a big trend. By getting together, we’re all creating a big movement that’s making it easier for each of us to get attention. Having Scoble come here with his cameras is a great example of the growing excitement for the startups in our community.

Thank you Rubicon Project for hosting this event in your office. And thank you Robert Scoble for coming here, shooting video of our startups and for being so generous with the credit.