Yup - it must be the weekend.
Besides the fact that Chris Pirillo was holding his annual Gnomedex this past week, the big excitement out there in the blogosphere was verbal nastiness being flung around as a result of Jason being called a spammer during his speech at Gnomedex by the illustrious Dave Winer; who was also in attendance at the conference.
What started out as some pretty basic heckling of Jason by Mr. Winer during Jason’s speech that centered mainly around his newest change the Internet endeavor called Mahalo has now developed into a weekend blogosphere verbal slapfest which has a whole slew of people jumping in with their opinions; which is pretty well guaranteed to carry the nonsense over until Monday when the serious stuff starts happening.
The simple fact is that Dave got pissy upset (*) because Jason; who was well within his apparent rights, discussed Mahalo and how important it was to the Internet. Well Dave apparently considered this nothing but spamming the conference goers and proceeded to say so loudly from the back row of the conference room.
It all is boiling down to the typical he said - he said ridiculousness that can ruin good and productive events; not to mention make the main parties involved look more like a pair of school kids whining in the schoolyard than movers and shakers of the Internet.
Sometimes some things should be dealt with one on one and not in front of the whole world because it only makes all of us look like childish idiots; and I am sure the whole silliness didn’t help out Gnomedex.
Here’s a list of a few relevant opinions and posts for you to follow up with - me I’ve got a far more interesting post by Jeff Jarvis to read
Jason’s view points - here and here
Dave’s point: here
Teresa’s opinion: here
Stowe Boyd’s thoughts: here
* I have changed the original wording of the sentence because as Dave pointed out in his comments I was being disrespectful in my choice of words. While I still feel this whole thing has gotten out of whack I wasn’t right in using a gutteral tone when referring to Dave’s opinion on the matter - Steven
Conversation Tags: Gnomedex, Dave Winer, Jason Calacanis, slapfest
14 Comments
A couple of responses…
I wasn’t the only person talking back to Jason, there were about a dozen people, and I wasn’t the first. Chris Pirillo also took the mike and made some of the same points.
The spam question wasn’t coming out of the blue. Jason was talking about spam, at a mostly non-commercial conference. True, there was no rule that you couldn’t promote product, but unlike most industry conferences, people *pay* to go to Gnomedex. So getting an ad when we were supposed to get educated does somewhat seem like spam, at least to me.
You should mention that Gnomedex does generally allow people to talk without waiting for permission. Steele, the first speaker did exactly that five or six times on Day 1, for example.
Finally, I regret saying anything. It was the only time I spoke at the conference, and I had planned on not speaking at all, at least partially because every time I do, it becomes controversial like this has.
Also there was a lot of back-channel in the the room about this. Jason, if he had really been on his toes, would have thrown out his slides and gotten into a discussion, like the one Kawaski did. I thought his talk and Darren Barefoot’s were the best of the show.
Actually I just re-read your post, and think that using words like “pissy” is pretty disrespectful. Why does this kind of discussion have to degrade like this. It doesn’t make you look very good, fyi.
I agree that rehashing the altercation itself isn’t entirely productive. But we can get something productive out of it by using it to spark a conversation about when marketing crosses the line from productive to spam.
Personally, I think that Jason was well within the bounds of useful discussion. Do I think his presentation could have been better? Sure.
Personally, I thought the facilitated conversations — like Vanessa Fox’s — were the most interesting part of Gnomedex.
But I maintain that Jason’s presentation added value despite its commercial overtones.
Dave;
First off I hope you have subscribed to the comments for this post but if not I will re-address it again with a proper post.
I have a lot of respect for you and yes you are right in that my choice of pissy was disrespectful but in the same vein I find it disrespectful to all the readers of both your’s and Jason’s blogs that you engaged in the verbal slapfest that you have.
It might make for entertaining reading for some during a slow weekend but to see a game of symantics between two intelligent men is not my idea of entertaining.
As for you speaking your mind and regretting it I wish you wouldn’t. Maybe the delivery could have been different I don’t know I wasn’t there and I have only your report as well as Jason’s usual cleverly slanted wordage to go by.
You may well have been within your bounds to say the things you said and quite possibly correct in your assumptions that you were being spammed at a supposed non-commercial event but did you really expect Jason - who is obviously passionate about what he is doing and a businessman - to do anything less than promote Mahalo.
I will correct the wordage that was insulting to you as soon as I can come up with what I feel is a fair replacement - and again I apologize for appearing disrespectful to you.
Teresa;
Jason was being a businessman and doing exactly what should have been expected of him to do - promote Mahalo. I don’t know what his supposed subject to speak was on as I didn’t follow gnomedex at all but if anyone thought Jason would do any different than what he did should know better.
However if he went into this conference knowing its “non-commercial” nature than he should have been more respectful.
As for the nonsense that has followed it is ego puffery time and doesn’t benefit anyone.
I didn’t engage in a “verbal slapfest” — whatever that is.
Geez, let this whole thing rest. I only am interested in discussing the product, services and market. You all are blowing it way out of proportion, and I’m going driving tomorrow, and I’m not going to keep this thread going, so good luck to you all.
Over and out.
Steven, great site. I’m sure Dave would think I was disrespectful of him if he saw that I called him a chucklehead in this instance. I have a ton of respect for Dave as a software developer and I love many of his ideas. I wasn’t at Gnomedex and wasn’t responding to Dave’s comments at the conference, but rather the posts on his blog yesterday and today.
If Dave’s not *interested* in Mahalo (or the iPhone for that matter) because he can’t develop for it, that’s absolutely fine. But Dave crossed the chucklehead line when he inferred that because he can’t capitalize on it, Jason shouldn’t get to promote it and was spamming the conference. Further, he inferred that Jason is running his business incorrectly by doing so (and doomed to failure).
On a guess, keeping his mouth shut at the conference wouldn’t have changed much. With the blogging world working as it does, Jason would’ve seen what Dave wrote on his blog, responded and we’d be right where we are anyway. It’s a nice distraction from Paris, Lindsay and Britney and if anyone thinks I’m a chucklehead for feeling that way, fine by me.
Robert:
thanks for the nice words about the site I do appreciate the positive feedback.
and you could be spot on regarding Dave’s penchant for not liking things that he can’t play with
Dave Winer doesn’t come out looking too good in these comments, imho.
In fact, he looks like the right royal tool - from taking a potshot at your writing “verbal slapfest”, to dismissing this comment thread to being offended/ disrespected to about your “pissy” comments.
me thinks he should ease back on his ego and patronizing tone and live with the fact that blogging is a highly opinionated forum and if the word “pissy” upsets him so much he should really get out of the blogging game.
Dave’s done some good things in his time but that does not give him an automatic pass from being called a knucklehead when it’s called for.
Is anyone taking the time to think about what Winer is actually SAYING?
This reminds me of when Republicans pretend to be SHOCKED at what “the left” are saying about this or that issue, and then refuse to address substantive points.
OK maybe Winer hollered at Calacanis; is the guy really
THAT thin-skinned that he can’t take that??? I thought he was a brooklyn street-fighter! come on , a little heckling never hurt anyone.
The irony here is that Mahalo would probably work much better if Calacanis were asking questions about what Winer meant instead of just using Fox News style smear tactics.
“The irony here is that Mahalo would probably work much better if Calacanis were asking questions about what Winer meant instead of just using Fox News style smear tactics.”
In my experience, Calacanis has been listening and responding to intelligent feedback about the site, but that’s always easier to do that when it’s presented in a non-attacking way.
In an ideal world, we’d all be thick-skinned enough all the time to listen to the substance of a message, even when it’s being hollered at us from the back of a packed auditorium. But we don’t live in that world. I’m sure there were better ways to get Dave’s point across.
In all honesty, Pirillo invited Calacanis to talk about what he was working on. Sure Jason could have done things a bit differently, but we’re talking about Jason Calacanis here. And for the most part, had it been simply a shameless plug for Mahalo, I probably would have tuned in and out.
Dave Winer had a good point, and had it been delivered a bit differently, the dialog would have been incredibly valuable to us during the event.
But at the end of the day, getting “Winered” was the best thing that could have happened to Calacanis. It made the session a highlight of the day. It made people pay attention. And the bonus is that the conversation is getting significant air time following the event.
I know I’ve made this comments over on my personal blog already, but I just want to say again:
1. I was invited to Gnomedex to talk about what I’m working.
2. My presentation was designed to be three equal parts: talking about internet pollution, talking about my solution to part of the problem, and a spirited Q&A. The second I said the word “Mahalo” Dave berated me…. I mean, common courtesy might be to wait until the Q&A, or as (forme)r friends to maybe talk to me 1-on-1 post my talk?
3. If the conference was a “don’t talk about your projects” conference I would HAVE NEVER said two words about my current project. I could have spent another 10 minutes on other people’s solutions to spam/pollution and went right to Q&A. I was never told not to talk about my project, and 10+ other folks talked about their projects.
I’m really sorry if I broke some Gnomedex rule, but I’ve been to three Gnomedexes in four years and I’ve never seen this kind of behavior. Of course, now I’m getting many, many respected folks emailing me about Dave having a pattern of berating people at conferences. I don’t want to get into Dave’s head or motives–it’s not really my place. However, I do think that as an industry we should learn from this:
a) be very clear about if one is allowed to talk about their project or not
b) be very clear that if you disagree with something being said that the backchannel IRC/twitter/whatever or the ample Q&A time is the place for that. Berating people mid-sentence is not the proper way to discuss anything.
As I said, I’m very sorry if I broke some rule, but it’s a rule I was honestly unaware of. In fact, Chris introduced me as Jason here to talk about a) internet pollution and b) mahalo.
I’ve been speaking for 12 years at conference and I’ve never had someone berate me in mid-sentence. I’ m all for spirited debate during the Q&A, but again common courtesy would argue that you let a person state their case before ripping them apart.
That being said, Dave might have good points about us having an API… which we’re working on. I don’t know that I agree with his benchmark that a project needs to be a platform that he can make money from to be valuable or interesting. That may be his personal benchmark for interesting, but as Robert states it is certainly not the benchmark of success in the real world.
all the best,
Jason
Jason;
thanks for commenting on this as up to point it was appearing one side from the involved parties.
Personally I find your comment here a little more level headed and less “promoter speak” than what wass on your blog - maybe time has given everyone a chance to level out over all of this.
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