A highlight every year for me is the All Things Digital Conference hosted by Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal.  For those of you not familiar it is a four-day conference  where many of the “who’s who” from the technology and entertainment industry sit for some great in-depth interviews.  While there are some product related interview, most notably this year is Microsoft’s Project Natal, the majority of substance isn’t the usual march of gadgets and upgrades cycles.  This conference focuses on the leaders themselves talking about them, their vision and the big picture of how they captain their enterprises.  It is some of the most fascinating content I find generated all year not filtered though a PR department.  That is the key, the unfiltered content.  Even when that breaks from the standard, the heavily coached Mark Zuckerberg’s interview was entertaining to watch him squirm.  I’m someone who takes a very macro focus on my business, our industry and the tech world in general; I find these interviews more entertaining and stimulating than any keynote ever given.

Kicking off this year’s event was a great interview with Apple CEO, Steve Jobs (link for non-flash video).  Now it’s no secret that Steve is one of the best presenters and public speakers to ever grace a stage.  From the interview you can really tell how passionate he is for what he does. As a founder that should come as no surprise, but compared on some other technology CEO interviews, there is a very different tone and feeling to what they do and how they see their mission.

Fast Company has a great article on this interview that visually represents the interview in one of those great word clouds where the frequency of a word is represented by the words size in the cloud.  The result: Steve is a “people” person.  This highlights a belief I hold true to our philosophy: technology is not about technology, technology is about people.

Categories: Apple, Commentary
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