I’m a big fan of Charlie Rose. You know he’s a powerful interviewer when a round table and black background still makes for a compelling show.
So I was excited that TechCrunch Disrupt kicked off with Charlie Rose (@CharlieRoseShow) interviewing venture capitalist John Doerr (who I’ll admit I’d never heard of before). Once they got into it it felt like I was watching the Charlie Rose show.
Doerr said we’re in the third wave of disruption. The first was the PC and microchips, the second was the internet, and the third is this mix of social, mobile, and new commerce. He says we’re on the verge of reinventing the web – that it’s all about people, places, and relationships now.
Rose asked him what would influence it’s velocity and dimensions. Doerr said apps would, and basically set the tone for the rest of the day by attributing that to Apple, the iPhone and iPad, and Steve Jobs (for the rest of the day 70% of the conversations revolved around the iPad).
He gave some numbers – Apple’s sold 85 million iPhone and iPod Touches in the last 2 years. They’ve sold 1 million iPads in 28 days (it took 2 months for the iPhone to reach a million). He also said Bill Joy told him smart phones would change everything, because they’re “Always connected, always on.” I haven’t heard Bill Joy mentioned since Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers .
The conversation shifted to Google TV and what it means. Doerr said it’s a new kind of immersive relationship between you and the medium (not a computer) in a cool, immersive, and fluid experience – and Google TV is one of the technologies that enables that (though so far I’d say Boxee has been enabling that for a few years). As an example he gave, imagine watching the Super Bowl and being able to click on a player to get their stats.
(There are quiet a few companies here that are aiming to make TV watching more of an interactive community experience. I’ll hopefully write about them soon.)
Once the interview was over, host Michael Arrington turned the tables and asked Rose a few questions (Arrington has a very interesting interview style, one that later prompted the CEO of Yahoo Carol Bartz to tell him to “Fuck Off” and Leo Laporte to blow up at him).
Rose has said that he’s not the story and never wants to be interviewed, but unsurprisingly he has an interesting story. My favorite quote:
My life is an engagement with what’s interesting to me
The business side of Charlie Rose is really interesting. He’s done over 15,000 interviews, owns and controls it all, and puts it all online. He’s turned down buyout offers because he doesn’t want to give up control.
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Posted in Media, Technology on Wednesday, 26 May 2010 at 9:14 am
