It began in 1993 as a newsletter of jokes sent to his friends in Des Moines, Iowa. Today Lockergnome.com's nine newsletter are read by more than 350,000 subscribers worldwide and its creator, Chris Pirillo is a tech media celebrity. He also produces Gnomedex, essentially a geekfest with an open bar that runs fours days and costs only $99.

But before all this Chris really wanted to be a weatherman, and along the way he nearly lost Lockergnome.com when a group of investors who thought they knew better how to run the company nearly destroyed it.

In this energetic interview with IT Conversations' host Doug Kaye, we get to know the personal side of Chris Pirillo and a sense of what makes him tick. He also has a chance to get on his latest soapbox: touting the virtues of content syndication using RSS or Atom.