In NDA’s Interviewing the Interviewers series, we catch up with some of the best interviewers in our industry, from journalists to independent content creators, turning the tables to find out what makes them tick.
Stuart Miles is Founder and CEO of Pocket-lint. A tech journalist for over 20 years, he previously worked at The Times, launched the video games channel on Amazon.co.uk in 2000 and founded Pocket-lint in 2003.
What is your biggest hope and your biggest fear for the tech industry in 2020?
With the pandemic having such a huge impact on everyone’s lives at the moment, it’s really fascinating to see how many of the technologies that were here but not being used being embraced.
And those successful technologies that we didn’t think would be adopted for another 5 years being used every day. The fear is that with algorithms now crafting many of our lives from what news we read to the shows we watch, making sure they are balanced will be even more important.
What was your biggest personal industry highlight of 2019?
Being accepted as a member of BAFTA.
Who was the most inspirational person you interviewed in 2019 and why?
Jack Dorsey was incredibly humble about founding both Twitter and Square, two services that have had a fundamental impact on a lot of people’s day-to-day lives.
What one technology are you most excited about this year and why?
AI translation.
We’ve started using it on Pocket-lint to enable us to launch international editions of Pocket-lint. So far, we’ve got Portuguese, Spanish, French, and German.
It’s all being powered by AI rather than humans and is something that wouldn’t be possible only a few years ago.
What was your favourite ad or digital experience of 2019?
Some of the things companies, like Apple and Lego, are doing with AR is really clever. It’s still early days but it has huge potential for the future.
What is the buzzword or phrase you’d like to ban forever?
Cloud computing.
We get it, it’s remote processing, but it’s not in the cloud, that would imply that it comes and goes with the weather.
Who’s the one industry figure you’d most like to interview you yet haven’t?
it would be good to interview Jeff Bezos.
How could someone persuade you to interview them and what would put you off completely?
They have to have an interesting story to tell that others would fine interesting too.
People care about stories not just announcements. It’s about the relevancy to it all.
Not just what you’ve done, but why you are doing it, and why it’s important. Many people forget the second part when they are pitching a story.
