I managed to pretty much avoid the Sarah Lacy/Mark Zuckerber SXSW interview fun, but this post by Valleywag made me reconsider. Let's just get my opinion about the interview out of the way up front; it wasn't as bad as it was made out to be but it was pretty bad; and it was pretty bad primarily because Lacy forgot the number one rule of communictions -- remember the audience. She had an audience of geeks, ergo, ask geeky questions. Whew, got that out of my system.
But more broadly, the twitter feed and the analysis thereof showcase yet another challenge in the world of communications -- the need to monitor and respond in real time to feedback that is happening, of a speech, blog, interview. The news cycle continues to compress, and this means we need to be able to move even more quickly. I'm not suggesting that Lacy should've been monitoring twitter feeds while she was doing her interview, but I am suggesting that if I have a client giving a keynote, I sure am going to be doing instant analysis of blog posts and twitter feeds and finding ways to either adjust or reinforce what is/has been said.
The other question the Lacy episode raises is equally interesting: who is the audience? In a connected world, it is as easy (almost) to reach more people outside the room (by a huge factor) than it is to reach those sitting in the chairs. Given this, does a speaker/interviewer optimize for those in the room, or those watching live/reviewing a feed some days later? My answer: both. But it's not easy. I remember one TechEd keynote where we optimized for the audience, and delivered a speech that had press coming up to me and asking for a translation guide. Got great scores from the audience, but clearly the broader audience missed. The flip side is delivering a business update at a tech show -- the folks on Wall Street might go gaga, but the audience is left flat. So the art is threading the needle -- be respectful and address the audience at hand, and be clear about who in the broader world you are addressing.
Understanding of audience has always been critical. Today, the feedback when that gets missed is faster than ever.