Conversations with the most influential figures in media and technology.
May 29-31, 2007
Carlsbad, California
Speaker
Jill Sobule 
Singer-songwriter
Jill Sobule belongs to a rare breed of artists. Her work is at once deeply personal and socially conscious, seriously funny and derisively tragic. Over five albums and a decade of recording, the Denver-born songwriter/guitarist/ singer has tackled such topics as the death penalty, anorexia, shoplifting, reproduction, the French resistance movement, adolescence and the Christian right. Did we mention love? Love found, love lost, love wished for and love taken away. She has recorded five albums, and achieved a national top-20 hit with "I Kissed A Girl." She has also performed on NPR and at the brilliant TED conferences produced by Richard Saul Wurman.
Posts With Jill Sobule
Coming to a Web Site Near You (This One): The Entire D7 Interview and Demo Sessions
Tomorrow, just two weeks after it took place, All Things Digital will start posting the full sessions of the recent seventh D: All Things Digital conference. We could not accommodate everyone who wanted to come in person, so you have already lost the opportunity to annoy major tech and media moguls and my mother all in one place (although Mission Accomplished! for BoomTown), but will be able to see all the content onstage here, in its entirety, on ATD, in the exact order we put on the show at the conference. As a primer, here’s News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch and singer Jill Sobule opening the show.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer: Bing!
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer introduced the software giant’s relaunch of its search offering, dubbed Bing, onstage at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference. Bing is Microsoft’s biggest and priciest attempt yet to catch archrival Google and Yahoo in the search business. It is a market where the typically dominant Microsoft is a mouse in comparison. But, no surprise, that did not stop Ballmer from doing some roaring about Bing.
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson: “Wireless Is the Priority of This Business”
Randall Stephenson is just two years into his tenure as CEO of AT&T, but faces challenges that have been decades in the making. Among them: remaking AT&T amid the steady decline of its landline business, future-proofing its business as our appetites for bandwidth grow, competing with the likes of Comcast in the cable TV market and fending off the proponents of Net neutrality who don’t care much for the idea of a two-tiered Internet. Beyond this there is the issue of continuing to build out AT&T’s wireless business, which if not iPhone-dependent, is certainly nursing a hell of a habit.
Voices
D7 Video: Jill Sobule’s “Morning Voice”
Singer/songwriter Jill Sobule took the stage this morning to start day 2 off on a musical note. No more songs about Rupert Murdoch (yet) but she promises to sing about the end of the world tomorrow.
Voices
D7 Multimedia: Singer Jill Sobule Serenades Rupert Murdoch
At last year’s D6 Conference, singer/songwriter Jill Sobule was introduced to media mogul Rupert Murdoch–and apparently he made quite an impression. To commemorate the occasion, Jill composed a song about their meeting and performed it from the stage to kick off D7.
Jill Sobule's Internet-Funded Album, "California Years," Debuts Tomorrow
We consider Jill Sobule to be the musical muse of ATD–which we desperately need since we are obviously way, way too jacked into the matrix. And, tomorrow, Sobule’s Internet-funded album, “California Years,” produced by the legendary Don Was, debuts. I urge everyone to click the link here and get a copy–online, of course. Let’s cheer on efforts like Sobule’s and hope for a hit. Because hers is indeed a small but mighty effort, as all kinds of content creators try to figure out businesses in the new digital age, unafraid of the changes inevitably coming (AP might want to take notes about this).
Happy Valentine's Day: A Geek Love Poem
Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, of course, so here’s a lovely sentiment on a T-shirt from the fine folks at ThinkGeek. (BoomTown is still in an Elmer’s glue coma from making 252 handmade cards with 33 pounds of glitter, which my sons’ school insists on instead of the store-bought kind from Walgreens that I prefer.) In any case, big, sloppy hugs all around to the readers of All Things Digital. And remember: Love is bling.
Memo to All Crepe-Hangers: It Still Ain't Nobody's Business If Jobs Is or Isn’t
Now, it’s getting flat-out macabre. That would be the continuing swirl of attention the health of Apple icon Steve Jobs has been getting. Rumors of his impending demise have been popping up periodically since the too-thin crisis of the Worldwide Developers Conference in June and look like they won’t stop until it actually comes true. My grandmother used to have a perfect rejoinder for this kind of funeral-chasing behavior, which was prevalent among her gang of Italian sisters, who–whenever anyone caught a cold–predicted the worst outcome: “Don’t be a crepe-hanger.”
Voices
So What Do I Know Now?–Part 2
Last year, here on the Voices blog, I asked you all for your thoughts on how to finance and put out my next record. I got some swell advice, as well as some good wishes. Many agreed that the patronage system–asking fans to donate money–was a promising idea.
MicroHoo: Jesus Is Coming, Look Busy
Everybody remain calm. While it might have looked like it was the rapture for major Internet players yesterday–what with everyone and his mother getting sucked up into the Yahoo-Microsoft takeover tussle and disappearing into the ether of confusion that now reigns over the situation–it is best to keep moving toward the light of harsh reality for illumination.
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