Esteemed members of the Searchblog community:
The Web 2 conference is coming up in three short weeks, and I have one hell of a job to do: I am interviewing quite an assortment of Internet leaders on stage, in front of nearly 1,200 people, for three days straight (I’ll be aided here and there by Tim O’Reilly, thankfully). The program of course has all sorts of other elements – presentations, panels, debates, and the like. But one of the hallmarks of Web 2.0 has been the one-on-one interviews, and this year, we have one hell of a lineup.
In the course of three days, among scores of others who will give presentations and speak on panels, we’ll be interviewing on stage:
Eric Schmidt – CEO Google
Arthur Sulzberger – Chair/Publisher The New York Times Co
Barry Diller – CEO IAC
Jack Ma – CEO Alibaba (including Yahoo China)
Niklas Zennström – CEO Skype (his first ever interview on US soil since the settlement)
Jeff Bezos – CEO Amazon
Bruce Chizen – CEO Adobe
Ross Levinsohn – CEO Fox Interactive (Myspace/Newscorp)
Jonathan Miller – CEO AOL
Ray Ozzie – Chief Software Architect, Microsoft
Roger McNamee and Ram Shriram- Venture investors (Elevation Partners and Board member, Google)
Eric Nicoli – Chairman, EMI
David Filo – Founder, Yahoo
Crikey. I need your help.
Now, I know that the event is sold out, and therefore not everyone can come, and many of you wouldn’t spend the dough (it ain’t cheap) to come even if you could spare the time.
Nevertheless, we plan to make the sessions available on the web as soon as we are able, in a format that will make them quite accessible. And with nearly 100 press and bloggers in attendance, your questions will certainly get coverage in real time. So, if you have any interest at all, I beg you to help me question these leaders while we got ’em on the spot. I promise to report back to you once all is said and done.
Over the next few days (I’m traveling so it might be sporadic…) I’ll be posting one entry per interview, and asking for your comments on the post – what do you want to hear from these leaders?
I’ve already started with Eric, I posted my request here late last month – please add your thoughts; clearly we need to ask about YouTube….
Next up will be Arthur of the Times, then Barry Diller, and so on.
Thanks for your feedback, it means a lot to me to hear what you want asked of these folks. And I am truly honored to be part of these dialogs. Onwards….