Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn talks about his favorite gadgets
— -- Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn is like a kid in a candy store. He loves bringing home gadgets and taking them on the road when he travels, which he says is three weeks out of every month.
Dunn, who started at Best Buy in 1985 as a sales associate, rose through the ranks to become Best Buy CEO in 2009. We met the active blogger, Twitterer (@BBYCEO) and TV sports enthusiast at Best Buy headquarters in Minneapolis to talk his own personal tech.
This Road Warrior's gadget accessories
A backpack weighing "40 pounds" stuffed with a notebook computer, iPad 2 and Samsung Galaxy S tablets, iPhone and Nexus S Android phones.
Hauling so much gear "helps me do my job," Dunn says. "I need to understand the technology customers are coming into our stores looking for and I'm kind of sick with this stuff."
Facebook friends: He's maxed out at 5,000
The "friends" are mostly Best Buy employees and industry contacts. "It is a huge part of the Best Buy community. I love being able to interact with my employees there. I love hearing about what our employees are hearing, seeing, experiencing" — even when it's negative. "That's real life. It wouldn't do me any good if it was only green grass and high tides."
Music
Best Buy still sells CDs, and Dunn still listens in his car.
"I like my music loud." With sub-woofers in his vehicle, Dunn says, "I like to crank it up, and CDs drive that like nothing else."
Always on
Dunn says he frequently checks e-mail and texts, even in the middle of the night.
"I keep my phone on at night. I'll occasionally wake up at 3 or 4, and I have to be honest, I peek at it to see what's waiting for me. And then I go back to sleep."
The most underrated tech product he sells: Slingbox
The set-top box, owned by the Dish Network, starts at $179.99, connects to your TV and enables you to watch shows anywhere there's an Internet connection — via phone, tablet or computer. Dunn calls it "undersung."
"I know it's not brand-new technology," he says. But "wherever I go in the world, it's with me — on my phone, my tablet, my computer, my son's dorm room — it's like the greatest thing."
With the Slingbox connected to his DirecTV in Minneapolis, he watched a recent Minnesota Vikings football game while on a business trip in Boston. He and his kids followed the action together via a Skype session on his computer discussing the game. "It's not 'I'm going to use my technology,' it's a constant part of it, minute by minute."
Trending Reader Picks
ABC News Live