

Suggestion: HN should have a reddit-style AMA (ask me anything) - MatthewB

It would be great to have a reddit-style AMA (Ask Me Anything), where interesting people come and answer questions asked by HN users.<p>I can only speak for myself but if there were a way to ask industry experts questions about...well anything...it would be extremely beneficial for us young hustlers and hackers.<p>Thoughts?
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nostrademons
I dunno. I loved the original concept behind AMA, which was that if you look
hard enough at _anyone's_ life, you can find interesting parts that are worth
listening to. The first half of IAmA's title is "Where the mundane becomes
fascinating..."

I dislike what IAmA is quickly becoming, which is a place where people request
only celebrities, pile on where they show up, and try to milk them dry of
information. A bunch of recent threads have actively complained about IAmAs
from "normal" people, which I thought was the point of the subreddit.

It sounds, from the way you've worded your request, that you're looking for
the second kind of post. I wouldn't want to see this, because I think it
teaches precisely the wrong skillset for entrepreneurs. Sucking up to experts
and milking them for information is how you succeed in the corporate world,
where advancement is predicated on what the people above you think. To succeed
as an entrepreneur, however, you need to intimately understand the problems
faced by _normal people_. That's your market: the millions of normal people
out there. And if you ignore what's interesting about their lives in favor of
what's interesting about the leaders of your field, you'll suck at capturing
that market.

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MatthewB
I don't think it would be like that. HN would ask questions and get insightful
information and stories from people who are as passionate about this industry
as we are. I do understand what you're saying about what reddit's AMA was
originally intended to be.

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ig1
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2476123>

I think people on HN wouldn't really feel comfortable putting themselves
forward for an AMA.

Maybe it would work if people nominated people they'd like to see do an AMA
(or even type of person "someone who's done xyz")

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ra
I don't agree. There's already Reddit for that

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MatthewB
Right but we aren't going to get people from our industry on reddit. At least
not easily.

