I hope at the next geek dinner we can meet up. I respect your opinion and understand your sentiment and agree that corporate companies should never turn events like the Geek dinner into a corporate presentation or pitch. I hope that my continued support for these events will be welcomed in order to ensure their continued success. It is not my aim or intention to hijack these events in any shape or form. So much so at the next one I will not even make a small pitch.

Sam

Tak

Sam

anyway I am sorry if I haven’t gotten the ” I didn’t get home till 5 am” right.

but everything else counts… I have corrected it in the blogpost also

There seems to be some disagreement about how much of a presentation per se took place there, and how much was just Microsoft paying for things.

So, to clarify my point: I don’t think it’s cool to pitch people at such a meet-up, but I do think it’s fine to pick up the tab and say why you did so.

And anyway, isn’t that already covered by sending Scoble to these things?

(Meta: Henriette, why can’t I preview my comment?)

I am the man Microsoft “sent” from MSN and as for a “speech” (2 minutes?) it was not my idea to speak at all. The only reason I had decided to sponsor – SUPPORT – the event was to ensure that there are many more Geek dinners in the future which I personally enjoy. I have been blogging since 2001 using Radio Userland.

The time and money Hugh puts into organising these events, booking the venue, paying in advance for the venue and food does not come for free! Hugh and I met at Les Blogs and agreed that MSN could make a small payment so that we were NOT seen as taking over the event as some big corporate company because I knew I would sadly recieve the expected trite comments like the one in your post. The venue mistakenly called it a “Microsoft event” which made me cringe too! It was and will always be a Geek dinner irrelevant of how it is paid for.

As for not pre-announcing the fact that MSN/Microsoft were making a payment was upon my request. I did not want to be seen as making a marketing gain from the wiki by marketing our sponsorship.
If I had stuck a big Microsoft/MSN logo on the Wiki you would have had a go at me for this. I cannot win.

As for making a speech and leaving. I stayed until the end and then took 50+ people to Kettners restaurant for more drinks which I personally paid for. We then all stayed for several more hours talking freely and not about MSN or Microsoft. By the way I got home for 5am!

I was also the person responsible for MSN sponsoring Les blogs because they could not afford some of the costs including the free Wifi you happily used. The alternative was to significantly increase the cost of the event for each attendee.

I am sorry you feel the way you do about the corporate companies participating in these events. I am happy to withdraw our sponsorship and support if that is how participants feel. But all I ask is “seek to understand before being understood”. Have a rant at me by all means but please get your facts right first.

Thanks

Sam

and I did never state that the blogosphere was only for geeks. I only stated that I don’t thing that “geekdinner” and “sponsorship” belongs in the same sentence, little mentioned in the same room.