Beyond Search About Page Update
November 9, 2011
After the carpet bombing by AtomicPR, I updated my About page. I wanted to make clearer than ever my policies. You can find the About page at this link.
The main point is that I did not design Beyond Search to be a news publication. If news turns up in the blog content stream, that’s an error. We rely on open source content and use it as a spring board for our commentary.
Beyond Search exists for three reasons:
First, I capture factoids, quotes, and thoughts in a chronological manner, seven days a week, three to seven stories a day. We have more than 6,700 content objects in the archive. I use this material for my for fee columns, reports, and personal research. If someone reads a blog post and thinks I am doing news, get out of here. The blog was designed for me by me. I have two or three readers, but the only reader who counts is I.
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Test question: Which one bills for time and which one donates to better the world? Give up. Mother Theresa is on the right. The billing machine is on the left with the mustache. PR and marketing professionals, are you processing the time=money statement?
Second, if someone wants us to cover a particular technology topic, we will do it if the item is interesting to us. If we write something up, we charge for our time. We also sell ads at the top and side of the splash page content window. The reason? I pay humans to work on my research with me, and I put some, not all, just some of the information I process in the blog. I am not Mother Theresa, don’t have much interest in helping injured dogs or starving artists. Therefore, in my world my time invokes money. Don’t like it? Don’t ask me to do something for you, your client, your mom’s recent investment, or a friend of a friend.
Third, the Beyond Search content links to high value, original information like the Search Wizards Speak series. Anyone in an academic or educational role can use my content without asking. If you are a failed home economics teacher now working as a search expert or an azure chip consultant pretending you know something about content analytics, you will have to get my permission to rip off, recycle, republish, or otherwise make what’s mine yours. I have been reasonable in allowing reuse of my content. There’s one person in Slovenia who actually translates my blog content into a language with many consonants. No problem. Just ask. Don’t ask? Well, I can get frisky.
A quick word to the public relations and marketing experts. Please, don’t send me cheerful email telling me your client is an expert. I am 67 and an expert. I don’t like other experts because I know how little I know. If people think I am an expert and I know my limits, why do I want to fraternize with someone who pays a public relations person to explain the acumen of the client.
Other suggestions for folks like AtomicPR, the spammer for a company that makes XML into the universal solution to one’s information woes:
- No webinars. Hate ‘em. Will participate if paid. Webinars begin with 200 people and dwindle to four or five. Not for me.
- Briefings. I think this means listening on a phone while 20 somethings explain how their product will “kill” some other product. Sorry. Not interested.
- Attend user conferences. I go to conferences when I am paid to do so. When I am not paid, I sit in Harrod’s Creek and enjoy the time left to me at the ripe old age of 67.
That about does it for the editorial policy and preference update for this free blog.
In closing, a person for whom I once did work chastised me for criticizing indirectly MarkLogic, customer of AtomicPR. My recollection is that I had pretty much forgotten MarkLogic until its spam happy contractors sent me three news releases in one day. I became interested and reported that Oracle had raised some mighty interesting questions in 2009 about MarkLogic’s core technology and its business approach. Now I am the bad guy. Sorry, I am the same guy I was when I received the three AtomicPR missives. I just jerked myself out of a short nap, common for us 67 year olds, and dug through my files.
Emailing me with a “hint” that I should change what is my opinion in a free blog designed expressly for my needs is not going to work. What works? Well, just read that About page and note the references to money. Time=money, get it? Buy an ad. Purchase space for an advertorial. Create content via www.augmentext.com.
Just don’t ask me to do something for free when you are getting paid to perform a task. I am a former eager beaver for Halliburton Nuclear and the once-mighty Booz, Allen & Hamilton. The DNA of sending invoices and getting paid is imprinted in my fundamental electro-chemical processes.
And for you I should make an exception? Not likely.
Stephen E Arnold, November 9, 2011
A freebie because I bill for my time and this is an advisory. Note the “ad” part, please.
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