Robert Scoble is an extraordinary man who is flipping the business world on its head.(That guy with the wild head of curly hair is my 20-year old, Josh, doing his flips on the backyard trampoline. He's a mechanical engineer entering his last year at the University of Maryland. He's bright, humble, athletic, and gifted in math and science. He just taught himself mandolin and guitar, recently recording a CD at a studio outside Pittsburgh. He's going to make a great employee and an even greater husband for some fortunate girl.)
Robert Scoble wrote Naked Conversations.
He has what the Irish call "The Magics," an extraordinary ability in some endeavor. In Robert's case, it is introducing others to the wonders of technology and blogging and the fact that trust between people is what takes technology from a dead bit to a better life.
I stumbled upon Robert's magic when I read his book Naked Conversations that he co-authored with Shel Israel.
Having studied and written poetry, fiction, and technical writing for many years, I can usually tell a good deal about someone from their writing.
What struck me most about this tome was the genuine spirit in which it was written, the ease with technology and the good that it could bring to humanity if done correctly, the evident humility and lack of pretentiousness in the writing, the insights that talking...not technology...drive the blogosphere, and the impressive marshaling of facts to support the premise that we are in for a revolutionary change due to blogs as great as when Jonathan Edwards preached the Great Awakening up and down the 13 colonies in the 1740's.Now...some was Shel and some was Robert...but even the fact that they co-authored this work and collaborated proved their point...blogs are the modern incarnation of Hegel's famous thesis -antithesis, synthesis idea.
You talk...I react...you react to my reaction...we talk some more, hash it over and reach consensus...then we act.
This has driven mankind from the hunters to the warriors to the businessman to the product team in any corporation.
I visited Scobalizer where Robert really has the magic's is his ability to wear his heart on his sleeve. Recently, he lost his mother.
He blogged about it in a very honest way. He said how boring it was to watch his mother die. I lost my mother two years ago and I have to agree.
As Christ said, "Let the dead bury the dead."
For what it's worth, Robert, if you ever read it, here are a few poems I wrote after my mother passed away that I hope helps you deal with the grief.
Poetry lets the mind and soul scream in the silence...and laugh as well.
He is one I wrote for my dear departed mother.
Dreaming of Maytag
"Regan Maud Good was a Maytag Fellow
at the Writers' Workshop in Iowa."
Contributors BioThe Antioch Review
P. 126, Vol. 53 No.1 1995
"MAYTAG!!!"
my mother's dream
for whom Sears Kenmore
was all she and my father
could afford to clean
1950's and 60's whites,diapers,
and clothes of eight children's sweat,
blood, dirt and life.
"MAYTAG!!!"
she would repeat
like a Buddhist chant to no one
in particular as she loaded
another two dozen diapers
into the Sears Kenmore.
Maytag to me ever since
has represented everything good
and right about America:
an extremely durable, practical,
and useful product that serves
the family needs for decades
and all at a fair price.
"MAYTAG!!!"
I can still hear my mother say
looking at the Appalachian mountain
of soiled laundry
on the concrete floor before her:
six mountains of socks,
five mountains of underwear,
four mountains of shirts,
three mountains of pants,
two mountains of diapers,
one mountains of separates.
"MAYTAG!!!"
my mother would repeat
with each and every load.
Here, thirty-five years later
in the contributors notes
when trying to discern
the kinds of poetry and poets
the Antioch Review accepts,
I find Maytag offers a "Maytag Fellow."
Free money and two free years of writing time.
I look over at my Appalachian mountains:
six mountains of credit card statements,
five mountains of IRS bills,
four mountains of mortgage,
three mountains of car bills,
two mountains of utility bills,
one mountain of children's bills.
"MAYTAG!!!"
I chant like my mother now.
"MAYTAG!!! MAYTAG!!! MAYTAG!!!"
That Laugh
That laugh would start
like an ocean wave
"AAAAAA…AAAAA
…AAAAAA…AAAAA "
and build in volume, depth, and pitch
until it became a tidal wave
"AAAA…AAAAAA
…AAAAA…AAAAA
and washed over
my brothers and sisters and I,
to our delight as children and adults,
to our embarrassment when teenagers
out in public, over everyone
within a half mile round
and continue in undulating wave
after wave until you wondered
how she got oxygen fast enough
to supply those great waves
of laughter that seemed to plumb
the very depths of a joyful heart.
It wasn't all laughter, of course.
There were Harry's diseases…
but even during the worst days
the laughter continued
in great bursts and passion.
And among her many sayings:
"God doesn't close one door
that he doesn't open another!"
"The lint on your clothes
means your going to come into money!"
she expressed the desire:
"I pray to God every night for each
one of you and that I go first.
It must be the hardest thing on earth
to lose one of your children first."
Now your prayer has been answered.
If we are allowed to carry
one talent from earth into heaven
when my time comes, and if
God decides to take me in,
I expect I will hear that laugh rising,
as it did on earth, louder and higher
than all the others to say, as she had
so many times when she was alive
and knew that it was only half true,
"You did it all on your own, kid,
and I'm very, very proud of you!"
