Qualcomm’s CEO Gets Outed

by Constantine von Hoffman

The big gossip out of the West Coast is that Qualcomm’s CEO Paul Jacobs is a … TREKKIE. This is only news because Mr. J has apparently and oddly been in the closet about his “alternative lifestyle.” According to The San Diego Reader, in the ‘70s Jacobs was allegedly the contact person for the “Star Fleet Club La Jolla.” What makes this gossip is the fact that Qualcomm’s PR folks would neither confirm nor deny the story. C’mon in the 70s who wasn’t indulging in strange and illicit subcultures? One would think that far from wanting to be quiet about this that it would be front and center on his resume. I can think of few better additional qualifications for running a herd of geeks than the fact the you speak fluent Klingon and have built your own tricorder.

But my sympathies go out to Mr. Jacobs. I, too, was once in denial about being a geek. My wife and I would argue about this constantly. She would happily say she is a geek and I would vehemently deny it, afraid that if I were I would no longer be “cool” (talk about delusions of grandeur). She finally won the argument because as I was in the middle of rattling off all the reasons why I wasn’t a geek, a knock came at the door and she looked at me and said, “Oh, yeah. The guys are here for your weekly D&D game. [Long pause] Geek.”

What could I say? Well, Mr. Jacobs, welcome to my world.

Intentionally funny PR quote of the week comes from ThinkGeek plugging their Valentines Day Gift Guide: “Apparently there is this concept called a relationship where two entities interact with each other in ways that at least one of those entities considers meaningful.  Kind of like Hal9000 and Dave. Or R2 and C3P0. Supposedly somebody then decided there should be an entireday devoted to nothing but the observation of such relationships. Why? We haven’t figured it out yet completely. We just know it means you want to get appropriately unique gifts for whomever your special entity is. Our special entity is still in Beta, otherwise we would share more details.”

Unintentionally funny PR quote of the week comes from ace tech editor Chris Lindquist who passes this one on: “Dear Editor, Setcom is pleased to announce that GCF has approved setcom OMA PoC 1.0 test cases today.”

Chris comments: And to think I was so worried that GCF was going to deny those cases! I’ll sleep easier tonight.

Thanks Gang!

I appreciate the efforts of Cingular’s Robert Di Gioia  and another unidentified reader for trying to explain what the heck it is my wife does for a living. Bob came closest to explaining it in words small enough for me to grasp, “It sounds like your wife is making a big computer by using lots of commodity PCs on a network, most likely running Linux” so he’ll be getting some truly trivial piece of CIO swag. The other reader will be getting a piece of swag for trying to identify the Linux source fish: “1) Red Snapper (For obvious reasons) 2) Artichoke (not worth the trouble to deal with…no wait, this is a vegetable. Sorry).” Hey, there’s only room for one funny person around here … and apparently you’re it.

Seen any particularly baffling PR lately? Know a good source fish? Want to share your story of when you realized you were a geek (and yes, just reading CIO should remove any doubt about it). Post your comments or drop me a line a cvonhoffman@cxo.com.