Uttercast Stephen Baker’s ‘Numerati’

Last night I was fortunate enough to be invited to a book signing for Stephen Baker’s (longtime businessweek reporter) "Numerati." Thanks to Scott Bauman (http://twitter.com/sbauman) of Greenough Communications for inviting, and Communispace for hosting.

I have yet to read the book, so no review here, but a couple of thoughts;

– Baker was genuinely excited by his subject, a good sign for any book (I thought his eyes were going to pop out of his head as he talked), despite the seemingly geeky topic of how the guardians of reams of data- about us- are changing the world.

– As a PR guy, I noticed that Baker said after writing this book he is less eager to talk to CEOs and more inclined to talk to researchers. Counter-cultural, but makes sense.

– Re: "geeky" content- "Numerati is laid out in a storytelling style, so it should be an easy read. I’m interested in the "Blogger" chapter, simply because I want to know if the Numerati can figure out for me which bloggers affect what actions in their readers. True targeting. Is that too much to ask?