more radio fun

It's been a good week for radio! I woke up this morning to my voice on the California Report. It was a brief story on the Webbies, nothing Earth-shattering, but loads of giddy fun nonetheless. And they even pronounced my last name correctly!

Then, today, I drove over to KQED HQ to be interviewed by Laura Sydell for Marketplace! We has a short talk about the Webbies and the myth of the dotcom crash (yes, the market dropped; no, the web isn't dead). If you're in San Francisco, I'm told the report will air on Thursday at 4pm. Other places and times are listed here.

It's clear from these two interview experiences (and just generally paying attention) that the theme for the Webby coverage this year is going to be "The Webbie Awards, After the Dot-Com Bust"! But, really, that's missing the point, and we all know it.

The web is different from the stock market. Just because the market had a bad few months doesn't mean the web has failed. It means a whole bunch of startups failed. That's just business. And business is hard. (Which is why I'm more of an artist than a businessman.)

The web does what it does, and we're lucky to have it. Perhaps it's not a good way to move product. It may not even be a good way to make money at all. But it will always give the average Joe a voice, it will always create communities, it will always connect people together because that's what it was designed to do.

And it will keep on doing it quite well, thank you very much, no matter how many dotcoms go bust.

{ 2:27pm }

» FYI, the program is archived in RealAudio format at http://marketplace.org/shows/2001/07/19_mpp.html -- the Webby portion is over 2/3 of the way through the show. (I searched for it using trial and error by dragging the progress meter thingy around.)

I was a little worried at first about their focus on the market (of course, it _is_ Marketplace), but the story eventually made the point that the Web is alive and well.

I enjoyed your thoughtful and amusing comments, Derek -- "freaks like them" indeed.

Did they actually play that cheesy song at the ceremony?

– Jason Gohlke  { 7.20.01 @ 3:46pm }