Thoughts on Scoble as he joins PodTech

It's the end of an era, and I expect the start of another. Somewhere around Saturday, Scoble confirmed he's joining John Furrier at a startup company called PodTech, effective July. Congratulations!

Looking back, Scoble changed the face of Microsoft. Before he got started, MSFT was a dark corporate monolith run by the wealthiest human in the world, one who's every public move is a carefully controlled public relations exercise. Casting light into the shadows of the Redmond halls, Scoble gave transparency to the monolith, and in bite-sized pieces made Microsoft accessible to his readers.

He turned the spotlight on himself too, and walked his talk even when the matters on his mind concerned his family and personal perspective. It's a good philosophy -- we're less likely to do something stupid when we know someone's watching. This is why religions have gods. So the community became Scoble's watcher, and as people joined the community and did the same, we all grew a little.

I met him a couple times at conferences and once at Microsoft during an ASPInsiders event where we were previewing what was later released as ASP.Net v2. He interviewed me and a few other members about our reactions and what we liked the best - this was for something he was preparing for the development team. It made me wonder how much was filmed for internal consumption and whether the man ever slept.

At this time I was just past the end of a relationship and going through some seriously emotional days. While it was great to be in the company of the good friends who make up the ASPInsiders, I wasn't what you would call focused. I can't imagine a moment of that footage being useful, but the experience taught me a lot about what makes Scoble successful. They're not new principles, but they're great to see in action: Scoble is almost entirely devoid of ego and genuinely interested in people. These qualities help one be fearless and engaging, and this allows creativity to happen. When you create this environment, you get good things from people, and this is how Scoble was able to break down the walls of Microsoft.

I'm looking forward to whatever comes next from both Microsoft and PodTech. Microsoft has a blogging culture now that will carry on, though Scoble as human aggregator added something special. My friend Rob Caron pulls off similarly relentless coverage at a more granular level for VSTS/TFS, and it's definite value. Who will pick up Scoble's torch? Can't wait to see what happens next.