PodTech Exclusive: Steve Forbes, CEO & Editor in Chief, Forbes Inc.

25:14 | editor | Oct 30th, 2005 11:26pm |

Steve Forbes’ first ever podcast in a PodTech exclusive. I traveled to New York City to sit down with Steve in his office to talk about flat tax, politics, world economics, blogs, podcasts, and social media. This interview is timely given the recent cover story by Forbes and the blog response from many prominent bloggers. Shel Israel sends an open letter to the author of the post Daniel Lyons. However some think that bloggers are being “played”.

Even though the article was off base I looked at the article in a positive light. With Podcasting for example those fears that are being promoted in the story can be eliminated by companies. Lyons is right in one regard - brands WILL be hurt if they ignore the format that consumers are demanding (blogs and podcasts), but it’s not because of bloggers it’s because of the social change. If companies use podcasting and blogging to their advantage, then they can participate rather than sitting on the sidelines. It’s an issue of being proactive versus reactive. Marketers are taking advantage of this medium successfully.

Full Transcript - Click Here: Steve Forbes first podcast another PodTech Exclusive

Guest: Steve Forbes, CEO & Editor in Chief, Forbes Inc
Host: John Furrier, Founder & CEO, PodTech.Network, Inc

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Sound Bytes:

John Furrier – Founder, PodTech
A question on technology, because this brings up the global economy that we live in. People are now connected. People work on virtual teams and technology has been a big impact recently

Steve Forbes – President and CEO of Forbes Inc
Technology makes everything more immediate, makes it more real, rather than abstract. You hear earthquake, “Oh, to bad!” But it’s hard to conjure up in your mind what it actually means. When there was the tsunami, when you see video, when you see photographs instantly, guess what, it becomes very real. It also means our response times have to be faster. In times past, it would be days, weeks before any relief got there and no one would even know about it, or really care about it. Today everyone says, “It happened a minute ago, where’s the relief? Why aren’t you there?” So I think that you get a much better, faster response time. Even though, Pakistan and parts of India, there has been massive suffering because literally, the roads were closed. But many more would have died in the world we lived in thirty or forty years ago because there wouldn’t have been those images because there wouldn’t have been that instant information that could direct precisely where the aid needs to go. We didn’t have the technology to deliver that aid via sophisticated air ships, the helicopters, so it’s all to the good. Expectations go up, but the demand for performance goes up, very uncomfortable, human nature being what it is we are never satisfied, it’s never fast enough, but by golly but it is much more responsive when you see it instantly then it was just a few years ago.

I think as broadband becomes a common place, full broadband, not what we have now. Maybe the equivalent of a thousand T1 lines in the next ten years that everyone will have. The possibility of delivery of services. What it means in terms of communication around the world. In terms of creating things we hadn’t even thought of before is going to be profound. iPod. Where was iPod five years ago? Non existent. That is what’s going to gin the thing up and it’s not just going to be new industries, new services, new products. Existing companies are going to figure out how to use this technology. They are going to transform themselves and be able to provide what we think of as traditional services in ways we can’t imagine today.

In talking about the Flat Tax Revolution Steve mentions the role of blogs and blogging. He says “You can get involved: either being part of a blog, starting a blog, participating in talk shows, writing letters to the editor of your local daily or weekly newspapers, calling your representatives. Simple stuff. We show you how to do it. If enough people start to do it, guess what? Things start to happen and one of the great things about this whole electronic era we’re in is you can create communities much faster than you could before.”

John Furrier – Founder, PodTech
No barriers to entry. The blogging has proven that.

Steve Forbes – President and CEO of Forbes Inc
No barriers to entry and you can find like minded folk, persuade other people and start to put pressure in a way that was just inconceivable a few years ago.

Read the Entire Transcript - Click Here

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 30th, 2005 at 11:26 pm and is filed under PodTech, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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