Guy Kawasaki Social Media Interview

I was honored a few weeks ago when someone I greatly admire, Guy Kawasaki, did a blog post highlighting one of my presentations about Mayo Clinic’s use of social media on the American Express Open Forum. Apparently he had seen it on Slideshare.net and thought it was worth passing along.

I’ve been a fan of Guy’s ever since I read Selling the Dream in the early 90s. He was the original Macintosh software evangelist, who led the effort to get developers to write software for a computer that didn’t yet exist, and that was going against the IBM juggernaut. As a Mac guy, you might even say he was a hero to me.

So I was pretty jazzed when he included my presentation in his blog post, and even more excited when he said he wanted to do something more in-depth to fill in the gaps that you don’t necessarily get looking at a series of slides. He posted that interview (which we did by email) today on the American Express site, and linked to it from How to Change the World, his personal blog.

I’ve learned a lot from Guy over the years, both from his books and his blog. I especially appreciate his tips on doing good pitches and speeches, and how to be a good panelist (although he puts it less delicately). I try to incorporate his lessons into everything I do in public speaking and forums.

So while he hasn’t actually heard me speak, I’m honored that he liked my slides, and it’s been great getting a chance to interact with him by email. I hope you find our conversation useful.