After Ashton Kutcher became the first person to reach one million followers on Twitter, there was a bit of discussion as to whether Oprah should give a keynote at BlogWorld 09. As you could imagine, there was a variety of answers, not all positive.
It got me to thinking…
At the first BlogWorld, Mark Cuban gave the closing keynote. I rolled my eyes a little bit when I heard the news, but I was also in attendance. I even got to the room a little early and stood in line so I could get a good seat. I can tell you I was pleasantly surprised. Though I didn’t agree with Mark about some of the things he said about blogging, I could tell he gets it. He used Facebook to drum up support for Dancing with the Stars, used his blog to speak his mind, and clearly loved it all. He was truly interested in connecting with people.
I asked myself, if I could choose a celebrity for a keynote, who would it be? My answer came quickly, with no hesitation. The person who came to mind is someone who embraced blogging and social media early on.
I get why Rick would want to choose Oprah and respect his reasoning, but I think my choice would be less obvious. If I could choose a celebrity to give a keynote or speak at BlogWorld 09 it would be….Wil Wheaton. Wil’s had the back of geeks everywhere for a long time now. From Wil Wheaton Dot Net to Wil Wheaton in Exile, to @wilw, he not only gets it, he lives it. Wil didn’t have to get on TV to beg for followers, we follow him because he’s one of us.
If you could pick a celebrity to give a keynote at BlogWorld ’09, who would it be?
Oh, Wil Wheaton…sneaky choice because most people outside of the geek community don’t think of him as a celeb anymore I would guess but he would be good because he really does get it and is a real geek evangelist. He just shows it’s cool by living it, like you said.
Another good choice would be Jimmy Fallon. He’s been using social media a lot to market his new show, and has brought tech celebs like Kevin Rose & Alex Albrecht actually on the show. He seems to really get it too, and by bringing it onto his show, could really introduce some of the geek culture to an audience that otherwise would never sample it. I’d say that is real evangelism!
Um, and why not APLUSK??