What Went Wrong - SXSW Keynote Sarah Lacy and Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
In my estimation, here is what went wrong. And, because I’m not trying to be mean-spirited, but instead, helpful, I’ve posted both suggestions for remedy as well as my experienced advice about how to handle a stage interview.
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The train wreck:
1) Sarah wasn’t focused on what the SXSW audience wanted to know about FB. She was asking questions that were general and business-oriented, rather than what the SXSW crowd wanted to hear about from Mark which I believe fell into three categories.
First, they should have discussed current issues with features about personal usage in FB and upcoming personal features for FB. It’s applicable to everyone. The second and most important to the SXSW audience is the subject of making money as a FB developer. And the most important and interesting discussion topic should hve been the future of the social graph and the social media platform
2) Her interview style was too chummy and delivered in a way that was supposed to position her as “in the know” but instead felt self-aggrandizing.
3) Her posture radiated an affected casualness that belied how intimidated she was. Everyone could tell. Better to be honest that you’re nervous and get the crowd on your side.
4) She was needlessly confrontational and horribly condescending. Noting how Mark was nervous at a past meeting together, she described him soaking his tee shirt through with sweat. Good god, he’s an amazingly talented and visionary man and a hero to most of the audience. She should have cut him some slack here and overlooked his nervousness. To bring that past incident up at this keynote was belittling and highlighted again how her own insecurities required her to punch him down to puff herself up. Boy did it backfire. Mark was smooth and in control. Sarah was infuriating the crowd.
5) Threatening Mark with an action similar to when she poured water on Michael Arrington of TechCrunch’s head was yet another inappropriate power move. What a humiliating gesture. I was horrified to hear about it and sickened that she thought it was additive to the interview. Grand-standing behavior like that is nothing short of being a bully.
6) The “hair twirling.” Some say Sarah was acting too “sexy.” I didn’t think so, She was nervous and that was a “tell.” I whole-heartedly encourage feminine behavior in business. We don’t need to act like men. Flirting can be fun for all when it’s positive energy and a pleasure to the audience and done lightly. In Sarah’s case, it struck me as a thinly veiled attempt at manipulation.
7) When the crowd bared their teeth, Sarah was a first incredulous. Again, the sign of rampant ego. Then she tried to fight back, when instead she should have apologized immediately and figured out how to right the situation. Why didn’t the programming Chair of SXSW run up and help her? More disaster. Then to add insult to injury she once again made it “all about her” and attempted to make the audience feel sorry for her, another misstep. The crowd was pissed.
In all of this, Mark continued to be gentlemanly, gracious and provide value. His ratings soared, more than they would have if Sarah weren’t so self-serving.
So Sarah, I recommend you fix this blunder in the following way.
Imran Anwar said,
March 10, 2008 @ 9:06 pm
I did not know much about this event or ‘fiasco’ but enjoyed reading your account/feedback. Good work, and it did not come across as mean.
Imran
http://imran.TV
Roxanne Darling said,
March 10, 2008 @ 10:21 pm
Susan -
I share most of your opinions and was similarly moved to post about it this morning. (Link is on my name.) You and I are the only ones in over 20 posts I’ve read that gives some of the responsibility for this mismanagement to the organizers at SXSW.
Great opportunity to learn from and get reminders for future related events. In a week it will mostly have blown by, but I would hope that upcoming speakers and interviewers would not try to emulate her style.
nmw said,
March 11, 2008 @ 10:53 am
Great analysis!
I wonder: Was Ms. Lacy representing any organization in her role as interviewer?
Rebecca Lieb said,
March 11, 2008 @ 12:59 pm
I was there, too. You nailed it, Sue!
D. Aristophanes said,
March 11, 2008 @ 4:14 pm
Good god, he’s an amazingly talented and visionary man and a hero to most of the audience.
The beginning and end of your relevancy to this discussion, Susan. Lacy’s not much of a journalist, from what I can tell from her work, and clearly she practices the brand of vapid, ethically questionable self-promotion which we see all too often with journos these days.
But you’re just as bad, at least in view of the above quote, by my lights. There’s no place in journalism for the sort of Kool Aid-drinking, flackish fawning over an interview subject that you seem to promote. Particularly when interviewing a powerful public figure like Zuckerberg, the journalist’s role ought to be adversarial. (Interviewing someone who’s just lost their house in a hurricane? Not so much. Circumstances matter.)
But the mistakes made here were not that Lacy didn’t feed the audience the particular flavor of pap they were demanding, or that she was ‘confrontational’ with Zuckerberg (she wasn’t confrontational enough), or that she didn’t kowtow with the requisite knee-scraping obsequiousness to the Merchant-Warrior-Poet-King of Facebook.
The mistake for Lacy was in agreeing to do this Faceflack-conceived bullsh*t ‘fireside chat’ in the first place. Your subjects can’t be your friends if you want to call yourself a journalist. New Media has supposedly made that rule obsolete. But much as the Dot-Commers’ New Economy was supposed to have rewritten basic rules of business viability, it’s baloney.
I expect there will be many more of these debacles in our brave new media world. And if this ‘trainwreck’ is any indication, future iterations will also leave everyone involved - the hacks, the flacks, the Twittertards, the Monday Morning QBs - significantly stupider by their having transpired.