Remember Jawed Karim, the YouTube co-founder who went to school instead of running the company? Yeah, neither do we — we forgot him five minutes after reading his humdrum profile in the New York Times. So who told him that the talk he was about to give at Stanford would become a "massive media stampede, with television crews and reporters from across the bay area planning to attend"?

That's what he wrote to a Professor Dill, apologizing for cancelling his scheduled talk at the Stanford Computer Forum last night. It looks like he gave a few hours' notice. Oh Jawed, you little media star!

Jawed's full e-mail is after the jump.

Prof Dill,

I'm sorry to have to do this, but as you know this talk was
originally scheduled long before anyone could have predicted
the Google acquisition, and it was intended for an academic audience.

As I'm finding out this morning through various channels,
this talk will become a massive media stampede, with
television crews and reporters from across the bay area
planning to attend.

It turns out that this would be a problem. The YouTube/Google
deal has not closed, and this is a sensitive time for the
company. I feel that this level of media attention at this
time may be a distracting from the closure of the deal. For
this reason, I cannot give the talk today. I hope you can
understand. When we scheduled this talk a few weeks ago,
nobody knew about the events that would unfold only a few
days later ;)

I'd appreciate it if you could re-distribute this email to
the original channels on which you announced the talk.
P.S.: There will be no problem whatsoever giving this talk
after the deal closes, and I still intend to do so at that time.
Thank you,
Jawed

Earlier: Finally, a look at YouTube's third cofounder! He's boring. [Valleywag]
Cancelled talk [Stanford]
Photo of Jawed [Jawed.com]

Contact information for this author is not available.