Andy Warhol famously suggested that “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” In time, the phrase 15 minutes of fame came to more generally refer to short-lived media publicity or celebrity of an individual or phenomenon.

Lightning Strikes

Out of the blue, I received a tweet from the Think Tank Media Group that I’d made their “list of top 50 Twitter influencers!”.

https://twitter.com/Think_Tank_Mktg/status/753306251434397696

I’ve seen many lists like that, but wasn’t familiar with Think Tank Media Group. I’m so unused to being on those lists that I didn’t even click on the link at first. When I did look at the actual list, The Best and Brightest Influencers on Twitter in 2016, I was blown away.

I was both impressed and amused by their description of me:

Making marketing look easy! Great haircut, used to work at Dell, now works at Xerox. Runs the #Nostaligiachat

The #NostalgiaChat hashtag had a typo, but the list did include lots of other folks who are influential on Twitter, including:

• Bill Gates
• Rand Fishkin
• Rebekah Radice

One of the Best and Brightest Influencers for 2016? They said “We have created this list of some of the best influencers on Twitter based on detailed market research and participation.” I guess if they went to all that trouble, I can wear the big hat for 2016.

Twice in One Week?

I knew something was up when a reporter from GeekWire reached out to me for answers to some questions. I got back with him later the same day and answered a few obscure ones. Especially intriguing: “If someone gave me $1 million to launch a startup, I would …”

The next time I looked at GeekWire’s home page, there I was, above the fold. I refreshed the page, and I was still there, at the top of the page looking back at the camera. It was positively surreal.

It was also gratifying. They had clearly read on my blog about my being The Other Steve Case. I was especially pleased that they highlighted troubleshooter as a high calling. Originally I acquired the title as a computer tech. I increasingly see it like systems engineering. I.E.: Understanding how complex systems and processes work together. When you understand how things work, you can figure out how to make them work together better.

Icing On The Cake

Several months later I noticed a GeekWire post titled What was the most important technology of 2016? Here’s what our top geeks say. That looked like an interesting read.

I decided to “Check out what our top geeks had to say” and was surprised to find that I was one of those “top geeks.” The post was a compilation of prior Geek of the Week responses relative to “Most important technology of 2016.” That begs the question of whether they’ll return in a couple years to see how we did with predicting the most important technologies of 2018.

Fame

I’m not letting this go to my head too much. This has run its course and I’m back to my fairly low key life – right? (Then again, I thought it had run its course until I was called-out as a “top geek.”)

Has anything like this ever happened to you? Share it in the comments below!