--- title: "A chat with scoble" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/7/18/a-chat-with-scoble.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/7/18/a-chat-with-scoble.html" published: "2003-07-18T21:20:00" updated: "2003-07-18T21:20:00" tags: ["Blogging", "Off Topic"] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "Robert Scoble tried to IM me the other day. I wasn’t at my computer, so all I saw when I returned to the machine a few hours later was “ If you’re around, ping me ”. My gut feeling told me that this had something to do…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # A chat with scoble By Roy Osherove July 18, 2003 In [Blogging](https://osherove.com/blog/category/blogging), [Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic) **Historical article** · Originally published July 18, 2003; technical details may be outdated. [Robert Scoble](http://scoble.weblogs.com/) tried to IM me the other day. I wasn’t at my computer, so all I saw when I returned to the machine a few hours later was “_If you’re around, ping me_”. My gut feeling told me that this had something to do with my rants([here](http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/posts/10095.aspx),[here](http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/posts/10164.aspx)) about the pricing schema of the PDC, but I wasn’t sure what he had to say about it.  Naturally, I started day dreaming. //Start Dream //---------------------------------- Scoble: _“Hey Roy. How are you?”_ Me:      _“_Hi Robert. Fine, and you?” Scoble: _“Great! Listen, the guys up here have been paying lots of attention to your posts about the PDC pricing, and we’ve come up with two decisions:_ _One – The PDC prices will be lowered to 500$ based on your recommendation_ _Two – We want to invite you and 3 friends to the PDC, all expanses included, because we think the Israeli developer community has been neglected for too long, and want to show you our appreciation for bringing that to our attention._ _What do you think?”_ Me:      “Great!” //---------------------------------- //End Dream Well, that’s not how it went. We did have a very nice conversation about the PDC subject, though. He explained to me some of the details of why the PDC can’t be done in Europe(MSFT can’t allow its devs to go overseas for a week, it would cost too much) and then , what followed, was basically me somehow ranting and spilling my guts out for someone whom I don’t really know. I still don’t get why I did that, but it was a good feeling. It was the kind of talk that you can only get on a chat session with a stranger from Microsoft… I told him how I feel trapped and not being able to attend all the important conferences. I told him that down here in Israel, we’ve got a small community of die-hard developers that are just itching to do **something** with Microsoft, to be involved, to chip in, to be part of this ‘coolness’ factor. This is something people in the US don’t really get. If you’re in the USA, you can easily enough get to any conference you want (if you have the admission fee on hand). Down here, and in other places I presume, even if you did have the money to get in, you still need to take a long, 12 hour flight, which costs a big load of money , just to get the chance to get in to a conference. And don’t get me started on meeting the most important people in the industry. Hey, anytime scoble writes “W_e’re having a [weblogger dinner](http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2003/07/17.html#a3847) at so and so…_” I’m reminded of this fact. What are the chances of people like Don Box, or Chris Sells or all the other cool .Net celebs ever coming to Israel? Practically zero. This barrier is tough, and I think a big part of my rants about the PDC were rooted in this inner anger of why things sometimes really suck on this angle. Of course, I still support and back up everything I said, because the pricing still totally sucks. Anyway, Scoble was a real sport about it, and I think that he “got” me. Hey [scoble](http://scoble.weblogs.com/), how about you coming down here for some Longhorn evangelism sometime? I’ll even throw in a **weblogger dinner** just for you! J ## More in Blogging [All posts in Blogging](https://osherove.com/blog/category/blogging) - Jul 23, 2003 ### [.Net Desktop contest winners announced](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/7/23/net-desktop-contest-winners-announced.html) - Jul 23, 2003 ### [Another VB.Net team member blog in the wild](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/7/23/another-vbnet-team-member-blog-in-the-wild.html) - Jul 18, 2003 ### [Weblogs@DotNetJunkies](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/7/18/weblogsdotnetjunkies.html) - Jul 18, 2003 ### [Make your desktop show active RSS content](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/7/18/make-your-desktop-show-active-rss-content.html) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/