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Comment by davesque | Hacker News Reader

I know it's just par for the course, but I always get annoyed how peppy and fake these keynotes are. When they go with this kind of faux-personal style where they're staging calls to their mother on stage, etc. It actually comes across as the opposite of personal and just seems really rehearsed and distracting. I'm actually not sure who they're speaking to exactly when they go with this approach as I feel like most other people would have the same reaction as me. But I guess I don't know that for sure.

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Apparently Steve Jobs calling Starbucks (during the reveal of the first iPhone) to order 4,000 lattes was an actual call to an unsuspecting Starbucks. Years later they were still getting people calling up trying to order 4,000 drinks.

https://www.fastcompany.com/3006147/because-steve-jobss-firs...

The article doesn't say anything about Starbucks not knowing about it. The employee who picked up apparently didn't know but I'd be surprised if Apple didn't get the go ahead from Starbucks first.

I got the feeling that they were intentionally trying to push the point that their employees had families to try to counter the stereotype of the 20s, childless workaholic that many have about Google. But part of its feeling staged is likely due to the fact that the presenters are real Google employees who's skills as actors are pretty limited. If you had professional actors presenting, it might feel more authentic despite actually being less authentic.

Then calling their mother is the wrong play since that is exactly who a 20 something childless workaholic would be calling for lack of a wife / children / friends...

I suggest purchasing a scarf, growing a beard, wearing some flannel and extremely thick glasses, and getting some cold brew coffee to sip. Things will make more sense then.

> purchasing a scarf

either steal a used one, or knit one yourself

I read: I suggest purchasing a scanf :(

The Microsoft Surface keynote guy does his really well and comes across fairly authentically. But it seems like the audience never gets his occasional joke.

Yeah, I actually have found those presentations to be more palatable somehow.

I don't think we're really the audience for these conferences, though.

This is to generate hype for the company, and to encourage people to buy google's products. Pretty much everything on here so far has been consumer-targeted.

That's kinda my point though. Are there really any non-developers watching this? I don't feel like there are probably many consumers watching since Google just doesn't have the rock-star power that Apple does. Maybe there are tech journalists watching or other similar industry figures, but I don't feel like this presentational style is actually required, on a psychological level, to engage with people like that. In truth, I guess I just enjoy poking fun at the circus of American big-business culture.

There are currently over 100,000 people watching this, and it is the number one trending thing on youtube.com

I think google has more of the rockstar status than apple does, or even ever did.

I'm not sure those two facts unequivocally prove your point.

Occasionally the media will pick out a couple short segments from these and broadcast them. I think that's the audience.

Also these keynote things are just cheap facsimiles of Stevenotes. Apple's own keynotes have started to slide down to this level of without him.

It's more to influence journalist to couch their features in human-relatable terms. It's about showing off specific, widely applicable use cases. 'Google launches another photo sharing service' vs 'Google launches Pics, parents can send grandma physical photo albums of their grandkids.'

No, I have the same reaction. The execution just isn't as there as it should be some of the times. And as others point out, the result is often a bit of awkward silence. Not a big deal though in the scheme of things

Quoting my friend, 'I feel like someone is going to get slimed soon.'

That basically happened during the YouTube bit.

Maybe they have some internal guidelines that everybody needs to follow.

Similar to

> Do.

> Strive for images that represent genuine stories.

https://material.io/guidelines/style/imagery.html#imagery-be...

I'm sure they do. One of the mottos at my company is "attack for progress", whatever that means. I think every sufficiently large business has a funny tendency to start making up wacky culture codes.

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