Statler: The question is, what is a muh-nah-muh-nah?
Waldorf: The question is, who cares?
I saw today that I was again nominated for top European SharePoint influencer, or however that thing is called. They have put me on that list the last year as well, and I’ve even won something. Hurray.
Let me make one thing clear: This is wrong on so many levels, that I don’t even know where to start.
Privately organized campaigns (this one is from a well known ISV) serve only, and ONLY, for their own marketing and promotion, and have nothing – NOTHING – to do with the community. They promote a false competition (where no competition should be!), and bring ZERO added value to the same.
The worst thing is: this is capitalizing on somebody else’s hard work in community. They did not form a community, they did not help the community, they did not support an user group or SharePoint Saturday. They did not create content, or supported bloggers, webcasters and podcasters. No, what they are doing is cashing on work of hundreds of community members and leaders, using already formed, stable and long-standing community for their own marketing purposes. It would be half as bad if they didn’t turn it into a competition, inviting “influencers” to call people to vote for them – making it look like a cheap reality show. That is just wrong. Very wrong. And, in the same time, very dangerous for the community, due to promotion of false “measurement” and “competition”.
So, I have nominated Yosemite Sam for this year’s award, since I feel that he contributes much more to the SharePoint community, than those people who organized this obscure voting. I encourage all my friends to vote for Yosemite, because he deserves our full support (we’ll overlook the fact that Yosemite is actually not an European).
