Don’t let the grass roots get mown down by the PR machine
I signed up for BarCampLondon2 yesterday. Yet when I checked my mail this morning I had an email from Bethen. Bethen seems to work for a company called Octane PR who, unsurprisingly, represent BT. Bethen reminded me that the details of the event had been updated and maybe I wanted to check the page.
This maybe doesn’t sound too bad, until you realise that I never signed up with this email address, as far as I know it isn’t really listed any place any more. If that wasn’t a bit annoying at the bottom of the email was a “News Alert” :
January 23, 2007
BT BACKS INNOVATION BY SPONSORING BARCAMP LONDON
As part of its commitment to driving innovation in technology at every level, BT has announced it’s the lead sponsor of BarCamp London 2007.
The event, which will be held at BT Centre, London, on February 17 and 18, 2007, is the second to be held in London and is part of a worldwide programme of conferences that includes Los Angeles, Montreal and Seoul.
BarCamp London brings together the UK’s technology community to share ideas and learn about technology in an open environment. These include attendees from design, usability, marketing/PR, digital agency work and venture capital backgrounds, as well as developers and programmers.
The BarCamp rules are very clear and create an environment where there are no spectators, only participants: everyone who attends is expected to present, give a demo, lead a session or support the event in some way. This helps to get everyone involved, but also creates more of a community atmosphere. First time attendees have to make a presentation or lead a discussion.
Gavin Patterson, group managing director consumer at BT Retail said: “As a company, we’re driving innovation in the technology sector, both for businesses and consumers. BarCamp is at the heart of this and brings together some of the most talented people in the industry, creating an environment where they can share, discuss and develop the latest technology and services, which is why we’re sponsoring the latest event in London.”
Obviously, I work for Yahoo! who hosted the last BarCampLondon. However, I don’t remember us making such a fuss about it. We were part of the write up in .net magazine, which was nice but I thought we let the event take it’s course. BT have already upset me with this, I really hope they don’t try and stamp any more corporateness on the event. I’ve been to a few BT hosted events which have been fine, so fingers crossed.
And, if it is just me not seeing Yahoo’s own PR machine, let me know. I do care if I’m wrong, I work for them, they don’t own me.
Technorati Tags:
barcamp, barcamplondon, barcamplondon2, londonevents
January 23rd, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Interestingly enough, a friend of mine emailed me today to ask if someone called Bethan from Octane emailing him should be a thing of interest or not. Seems she emailed various people in a rather unsolicited manner.
January 23rd, 2007 at 1:09 pm
I got that email too. Also to an email address I didn’t register. Strange.
Your .net magazine link is missing by the way.
January 23rd, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Edit: an email address I didn’t register with, rather. Feel free to edit my comment.
January 23rd, 2007 at 2:05 pm
@Frances
I’m so not supprised.
@Richard
Thanks for that I updated the post.
January 23rd, 2007 at 5:16 pm
I am signed up (again) but have not been contacted. I will not take it personally though.
Could it be that this has nothing to do with the signup, but the details came from a web search or other database?
Why not just give Bethen a call and ask why you were contacted and where the contact details came from. I have a number for Octane PR UK somewhere if the email does not contain one. I guess Ian may also be able to shed some light if it did come from signup.
Anyway, see you all at bar camp.
January 23rd, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Alistair, I don’t really mind someone tracking my email address so much, as the fact BT have some PR people bigging up BarCamp. My emails are hardly very secret, it was more the sullying of the grassrootiness.
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Hi Guys,
So first up I knew nothing about this email till I received a email from ben metcalfe. Then I checked my email and noticed I had received one myself.
About the signup emails - I would NEVER give out your emails to another company or person for this reason. The PR company did a google search or something because all those emails in cubicgarden.eventwax.com are safe and BT or anyone else don’t have access to them.
Expect a full reply on my blog soon
January 24th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Bethen sent me a mail
I appreciate Bethan’s trying to do her job. I’m not upset with her. I’m pleased she wrote back, that’s nice of her. I think Ben’s points were excellent. Bethen doesn’t seem understand this space, or the people that inhabit it. Mostly I’m upset that BT threw their marketing machine at us.
January 28th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
From my interaction with British Telecom I can say with great confidence that some employees will get this, but most will not.
I can only presume that they are sponsoring this BarCamp for it’s marketing potential. This is not a bad thing, but they will want to achieve maximum gain from there investment, and will employ the same processes they would otherwise to achieve this.
It is a shame that Octane PR did not get to understand the BarCamp ethos before jumping in, and probably do not now, but we should not expect this as it is vastly removed from the concepts that they are familiar with. I have to say that I believe Yahoo! got it spot on and benefited from it, but that is because of the ethos of the company.
My big concern is what we will be subjected to on the day, and how the marketing machine will portray the event afterwards. Perhaps I should have a “BT are Sh1t” t-Shirt printed up just to make certain I don’t appear in any inappropriate publicity photographs :-).