I discovered Wednesday night that there was some fallout from my detailed blog entry about how I felt that the AMA Hot Topics blog event today wasn’t worth the registration fee. Henry Copeland from blogads asks and atttempts to answer the question Who is TDavid and why do we care what he thinks?:

TDavid is a blogger. He’s an opinionated, obsessive, savvy geek with a megaphone who can, with a few perceptive comments and just one or two readers who also blog, ruin your reputation in 15 minutes.

Henry, you make me sound like some sort of blogger heavy, lol! I’m not out to ruin anybody’s reputation. Besides being of questionable legality, I am simply offering my personal and sometimes professional opinion on a number of things here; things that make you go hmm. Ok, well, I’ll admit that if someone is an outright fraud and has ripped me and/or my family, clients, etc off, then yeah, I might have some pretty harsh, condemning words for that person and/or company. I have no love for a few companies and it’s been because they have demonstrated no care or concern for their customers. That’s me. I’m a paying customer. If I pay to attend your seminar than I’m your customer. If I’m thinking about doing so, then I’m your prospective customer. If I tell you why I didn’t buy from you then I’m going the extra mile, which Henry clearly sees.

When it comes to the AMA hot topics blog event, I did seriously consider attending that event. After reviewing I was disappointed when it seemed like just another overly expensive seminar put on primarily by people who didn’t really understand or demonstrate marketing with their own blogs/blogging. A conference about blogs and marketing without a blog itself? 

Casting that important foundation aside, hey, if I believe that I can pick up five times what was spent (that’s the ratio I use for advertising too, BTW) worth the information and/or network connections (not that difficult to do really if the information is well presented with educated, informed speakers) and there are no scheduling conflicts then there is a 99% chance I’ll be there.

What I questioned was the content of the program which Toby Bloomberg has adequately addressed. She said they were going to be making changes both in the comments here and on her blog (she blogged multiple times about my comments), but unfortunately all this was too late for Seattle — the one where I could have actually attended. She cares. I can get behind almost any seminar put on by people who care. My only regret now about this event is that after the AMA’s generous invitation I am unable to attend because of my own scheduling conflicts. The record should reflect though that I didn’t write my original post to get a free pass to the event, I was more encouraged by the fact that somebody would actually listen and care. For that, my post was worthwhile and useful to somebody that could make a difference in future events like this.

It sounds like Scoble is going to have a session today dealing with why the event on blogging/marketing itself doesn’t have its own blog, which is an excellent question that he and I briefly discussed the other night at the Seattle Blogger Meetup. BTW, Toby, if/when you read this, I didn’t say anything to the Seattle Times reporter, so I think you might have misunderstood something. As for search engine impact which Scoble also mentioned, look at what you find when you Google Hot Topics Blog Event (see screenshot at top of this blog entry). Aha, there be gold in that screenshot. Just gotta dig a bit.

This brings us back to Henry’s question of Who Am I? Well, my full, detailed, updated bio is available here: http://www.tdscripts.com/bio.html and it’s also been listed on the main page of the blog as “primary author” of this blog. In reference to the person who asked Henry who I was, I would hope before anybody seriously asks that question — I mean, if he/she really cares – that h/she might actually Google my name, visit a few of my websites and at the very least read my bio. That’s what I did with the speakers at the AMA hot topics blog event and it is exactly what drove my commentary.

For those in attendence today, please use the comments or trackback and let me know what you learned that will help you market your business through blogging better. Perhaps this will excite and encourage a few more folks in Chicago or New York to sign up. If this comes back around here again, I will be there if it is at all possible. Especially now that Toby has said they will be reworking the focus and content.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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