Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg kicked off the annual Code Conference by interviewing Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. I found the interview both fascinating and revealing. Fascinating because of the tidbits that Swisher and Mossberg crowbarred out of Nadella, and revealing in that I really didn’t get a sense of vision from Nadella. To me, he had a great opportunity to lay out his grand vision for his company, to pontificate a bit, but instead, he looked clenched, close-mouthed, and a bit uncomfortable. See the video below for the highlights.
I also enjoyed this article about Gwyneth Paltrow’s speech at Code.
> Her topic — which she had talked about with Re/code earlier, as well — was the “objectification and dehumanization” of anonymous Internet comments. Or, she said, how it feels to be “a person in the culture that people want to harm.”
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> “We can momentarily anesthetize ourselves by focusing on someone else’s life, get a nice hot shot of schadenfreude and keep going, but how does this serve us?”
To be fair we don’t always get the vision thing from Tim Cook either. Usually it’s just broad statements like making the best products. But who doesn’t have that vision?
Nadella did look a bit as though he’d been expecting softballs, and his answers were more evasive than I’d hoped. I’d like to see the entire interview in one piece, not chunked up for page views.
At least he’s complimented by Phil, Jony etc.
What bugged me about that video is that Kara and Walt have little personality either. Especially Walt. And two old foggies talking to more old foggies or even just middle aged ones doesn’t really excite me in terms of seeing a vision of the future. Perhaps if they got Walt up there with a youngster they could ask questions that appeal to the future generations and show some vision.
And the edit cuts raise the question of how honest is this video in terms of giving us what he actually said.
I don’t need Kara or Walt to have great personalities. I need them to ask pertinent questions, and dig for answers when their guests are being evasive. Which they do to a greater degree than a lot of other reporters in the business.