Bytemarks

After all these years on July 5, 2008 I finally got Guy Kawasaki (aka @guykawasaki) to sign my Iolani Annual. Back in high school you would never think of having an upper classmen sign some lowly junior’s yearbook. So thirty five years later I figured what’s one year difference going to matter. Lucky for me, Guy got a kick out of checking out some of his old classmate’s pictures and I got an autograph. What was quite amazing about this tweetup was that 24 hours before hand it wasn’t public knowledge but once @infinitypro got the word out via Twitter that Guy was interested in meeting up with some of the tech community we had a good 40 people show up at the Hawaii Prince Hotel pool side veranda. In that short amount of time, it was the perfect size. Everyone got a chance to participate in the conversation. The dialog covered all topics ranging from the state of tech in Hawaii, Twitter, Alltop.com, life in Silicon Valley, interviewing Steve Ballmer, Steve Case, Garage.com, venture capital and even a little philosophical waxing. It was a tremendous opportunity to talk one-on-one with someone who has made a name for himself and sustained an ongoing presence and notoriety in an area where high stakes oneupmanship is a daily occurrence. Throughout it all, Guy seems to have maintained his local boy perspective. Although he did admit at one point in the conversation that if he made his billion dollars, we probably would not be hearing or seeing much of him. Perhaps to our benefit he is still just a millionaire. If you are interested in virtually experiencing the tweetup, @infinitypro captured the evening in a Ustream.tv webcast. Also Nadine Kam (aka @fashiontribe) wrote a nice post in her Star-Bulletin blog. Finally if you didn’t get enough of Guy in the Steve Ballmer interview, in which I think he did a killer job, then you have to see him in his standing ovation speech at TieCon 2006 on the subject of his book Art of the Start. He truly has the gift of mastering and delivering the message.