He who dies with the most tweets wins?

I moderated a panel at Oracle OpenWorld. Chris Leone of Oracle introduced me to the audience as an author. My OOW registration badge said “independent analyst”. Most of my clients call me an adviser. I travel in many circles and go by many other monikers – speaker, consultant, change agent, troublemaker. 

We all produce content in various formats, for various channels. And we all like to brag – we have x thousand Twitter followers, we get so many page views, my longest presentation had x hundred slides etc.

What of that will be remembered 5, 25, 50 years from now?

I was reminded of that when I read Paul Ford’s musing in The New Republic

I am absolutely convinced that someone, someday 50 or 100 years from now, will be working at a computer near where I am seated right now, and he or she will come across the address of my office mentioned in this article—902 Broadway—and will read with amusement or wonder or puzzlement about my experiences. I greet you, and the people who follow you, and the ones after them, and I hope that I give you a moment’s satisfaction, and that you take as much pleasure from your search as I did.

I have no doubt two books I have recently read – The Martian by Andy Weir and The Pentagon’s Brain by Annie Jacobsen, will be referenced for a long time. Both have amazing amounts of research. Andy is an amateur astronaut and his work, while fictional has won admiration of several at NASA, and now with the movie adaptation, millions of other fans . Annie has doggedly researched archives going back decades in areas many would rather have left unexplored.

What would someone say about my body of work in the future? I hope they not just reference my SAP work. I hope someone asks “what made him dust off the old Greek term Polymath?” I hope someone finds useful what I have written about places like Estonia and Roosevelt Island. I hope they enjoy the blog series where hundreds of friends have written about how technology has evolved their hobbies/passions. I hope someone researching Seth Ravin of Rimini finds factoids in my writing that he likes to quote Churchill. Or that Charles Phillips of Infor designs his own shirt collars.

One of the best compliments I ever received was in an Amazon review Frank Scavo wrote

“Vinnie's way requires more work, but it's more rewarding: Do your homework, pick up the phone, talk to those at the center of the action, and learn something new.”

Thanks, Frank, but I am humbled by the breadth of Andy’s and Annie’s research. Raises the bar for my next project.

Also, it’s way too early to think about legacy. As Kenny Rogers says “…there will be time enough for counting when the dealing’s done”.