Steve Clayton is the first to tell you that he is Microsoft’s director of storytelling, not director of spin.
I was struck by Steve’s candor during a 30-minute presentation at an IABC Seattle meeting.
He said his job is often to convince people that Microsoft isn’t “boring”.
And that his job would become irrelevant if everyone understood Microsoft – and that he doesn’t see that happening.
And that the Xbox controller is a "barrier". Conversely "by waving at a TV with Kinnect, one billion more people can experience technology".
As background, Steve works with teams across Microsoft to highlight work of product groups, Microsoft Research, incubation teams and individuals–all with the aim of providing an insider’s view of Microsoft and showing people what’s next in technology.
Steve spends time with the company’s developers, researchers, ethnographers, sociologists, cinematographers–and even race-car drivers–and highlights their work through speaking engagements and the Next at Microsoft website. http://blogs.technet.com/b/next/
One of Steve’s main assignments is to provide daily content for the site, which he says has seen days with 100,000 page views.
Of course, he isn’t going direct to the masses.
To provide the biggest impact, Steve is attempting to sway 50 bloggers and media members “because they can influence 50 million or 500 million”.
Steve is on Twitter @stevecla.
