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04/23/2005 Archived Entry: "Belly-Achin' Blowout"

In the weblog meetup report I posted here, I ended with a note about a post on the Meetup Watch PR blog. Jack first noticed the post because there was a click-through to my site from there, but I'd have found it soon after because there was a trackback to it on TDavid's meetup report.

The post (written by Myles Weissleder, VP of Communications at Meetup.com):

Belly-Achin' Bloggers in Seattle
According to a fun image on Make You Go Hmmm, seems that some of the good folks at the Seattle Blogger Meetup chipped in a few bucks and helped Anita Rowland with the nominal fee for the Seattle Blogger Meetup Group. Guess this Meetup was worth their time-- at least $2 bucks worth! Y'all had a good Meetup and you supported your local group! Sounds like everyone should be happy. We work hard to make it easy for you pull this together. So really, folks, what's the belly-achin' all about?

My first reaction was to be a little annoyed because the blog had a place for comments on the main page of the blog, but comments had been turned off. This inconsistency bothered my copy-editing soul. So I posted about that on the Suggestions area of the Meetup.com message boards.

I didn't much care for the Belly-achin' terminology --seemed dismissive and condescending. But Dylan Wilbanks posted a great rant entry about this on Friday afternoon. "To a Meetup employee to say that we, the customers of Meetup, the members of Weblogger Meetup No. 1, are a bunch of belly-achers is not only ludicrious, it's insulting. For their PR person to snark about us like that on a public blog is unreal, and it minimizes the real questions and concerns all Meetup groups are dealing with right now over the decision to charge monthly fees. Whomever this Myles is, his PR skills are on the same level as, well, my mad skillz at skateboarding. (Non-existent.)"

Note: even though we are Weblog Meetup Number 1, that's really just an accident of fate. Meetup groups weren't numbered when they got started. We might have been a large, active group when they did the numbering and I liked that we got assigned number 1, but all the weblog meetups started at the same time, and I don't think we are the largest.

Saturday morning I decided to post about this incident on the section of the Meetup message boards dedicated to talk about the organizer/group fees. I also sent an email to Robert Scoble with links to my report, Dylan's post, and the original Meetup Watch post.

Saturday is a slow news day and the story took off in a way that surprised me but didn't displease me. Maybe the colorful term Belly-achin' had something to do with it.

By the end of the day, Hilary Moon (message board administrator for Meetup.com) had replied to my post, apologizing nicely: "Let me be the first from Meetup to apologize for the Belly Achin' comment. I think that it was an attempt at humor that seriously misfired, but it should never have been written." Matt Meeker (Meetup.com co-founder) sent me email, also apologizing nicely: "I believe Myles was kidding around, but either way, it's way out of line and I apologize to you and your group for that message. We appreciate you and your group chipping in, and if we can do a better job serving you, you have every right to demand it."

It took a while for Myles to respond -- he was spending time with family for Passover, perfectly understandable. He replied to:

• My message board post -- "I'm sorry if y'all took that post the wrong way. It wasn't meant to put you down ... the title was merely a reference to the annotated photo where, if you ask me, it really looked and sounded like y'all were belly achin'..."
• A post by venture capitalist Rick Segal -- "Folks took the comment 'Belly Achin'' the wrong way. It wasn't a put down. If you re-read the post on Meetup Watch, you'll see it's the *photo* I commented on... "
• Dylan's weblog post -- "Belly Achin was merely a reference to the annotated photo #3 where, if you ask me, it really comes across that y'all were, well, belly achin' [...] If you ask me, these comments really comes across that there was a whole lot of belly achin' going down. So I called it."
TDavid's post -- "However, at the end of the Meetup, people DID end up chipping in right? $2.00 to hang with some of the best bloggers on the planet! Not a bad deal. Not all that sucky. Maybe we ought to request the photo annotations be toned down so it doesn’t make you guys look like y’all were belly achin’ "
• My original weblog report on this site

I don't think any of these were perfect in humility, but the attempt was there.

So, where do we stand? I don't think the Seattle Weblog Meetup group will be doing anything different than we were already going to do -- pay for now and explore our options. I hope that Meetup.com will re-embrace the values of courtesy and community that were part of it from the beginning.

Posted by TDavid @ 04/25/2005 10:06 AM PST

TDavid -- I'm unclear what exactly you're looking for from Myles. Is he not supposed to mention your site at all? Is he supposed to roll in rusty nails and sit in a boiling tub of Tabasco sauce? (HYPERBOLE!)

If he's not saying the right thing, then what would a meet and right apology from him look like?

I think the third version works -- he puts the blame on himself for misinterpreting the image, not on the image "setting him up." The second version (the one on my blog) missed this aspect.

Obviously, my thoughts, YMMV, we're an anarchist collective around here. You're going to disagree.

I am going to put something out on corporate blogging tonight, probably expanding on the great set of articles in BusinessWeek.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_18/b3931007_mz001.htm

I am still a bit surprised that the Times or P-I haven't shown up. Any time someone mutters "blog" within two blocks of their buildings they send someone to sniff around our blogs. OTOH, this hasn't had that much impact -- it didn't even crack the BlogDex top 100.

Posted by dw @ 04/25/2005 09:49 AM PST

Hi Nick :)

When you get a second please comment over on the thread where I asked specifically for those interesed in helping (if you haven't already done so, that is):
http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20050421/1742

Just saw that a new member named Teri apparently has a hosting company (I haven't checked this out yet) and is willing to provide hosting to the outlined prelim specs that we'd need for this project.

Counting you Nick, that's three people I believe that are willing to provide hosting for this project.

I've registered a project at basecamp and will include those who are interested over there. For those who aren't familiar, basecamp is a relatively new project organization system. Thought this might be a fun way to try out their system and help get this project organized.

Our business line is (253) 321-7367. Feel free to call me and tell me that you want in, whomever wants in, and what you can and/or are willing to do with the project. Soon I'll be contacting those who post on this thread directly: http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20050421/1742/

Posted by TDavid @ 04/25/2005 09:07 AM PST

Put me on the list as "interested in helping out" ....I could help do the IA work and design work if needed... not to mention XHTML/CSS stuff.

I can get us a host to provide us with free web space if needed. I also have some space of my own I can contribute as well as a domain name if needed.

Posted by Nick Finck @ 04/25/2005 08:51 AM PST

Dylan - that's easy for you to say. He hasn't fingered your site in his so-called *third* apology:

"Please accept this formal, sincere apology for my use of the term 'belly achin' to describe the scene portrayed in the photo found on makeyougohmm.com"

Doesn't Myles realize this photo was SATIRE? Three apologies and he still doesn't get it right.

I wonder if he blames the Simpsons for all the jokes he doesn't get?

All of you, some of you, or none of you are welcome to move on, but I won't be accepting his so-called apology until he stops making excuses and proffers a real, legitimate, non-excuse laden apology.

I won't hold my breath.

Posted by TDavid @ 04/25/2005 08:49 AM PST

Anita is correct. I think an apology without *any* excuses is a legitimate apology. Until and/or if I see one of those from Myles, I'll continue to hold to the notion that this guy is a complete a**hole and not truly sorry for anything he said or did in this.

"The photo was wrong" attributes blame for his actions. That's an excuse, and a lame one at that.

And over on my blog instead of giving me a real apology for not even using my name in a couple of his comments elsewhere he actually is trying to get my permission to use the captioned photo on Meetup -- which he will not be receiving. Let him come to our meetup and make his own captions during or afterwards :)

Clearly he wants to hang his comments and actions on those satirical captioned photos as the reason why he did what he did. I don't find that cool at all that he wants to pin his stupid actions on anything having to do with me. I didn't tell or suggest to him to post that 'belly achin' BS on meetup.com.

This guy and his phony apology can stick it. All he has done is help motivate me to work with others in the group in developing something better than meetup.com. Maybe. Maybe not.

Good for us, regardless, bad for them either way.

Posted by TDavid @ 04/25/2005 08:41 AM PST

And if you don't consider the apology on my blog to be satisfactory, please refer to the original offending post for a third draft.

http://press.meetup.com/watch/archives/000994.html

I think he's apologized enough. Time to move on. And as I said on the Meetup board, I really think he should come to our next Meetup. After all, he IS a blogger.

Posted by dw @ 04/25/2005 08:40 AM PST

Kai, I'm considering Myles's second attempt posted on Dylan's Client and Server as an apology that is mostly ok.

"I'm sorry. You are right -- I am wrong. The photo was wrong. The term belly achin' is plain wrong. I apologize. Sincerely. Can we all be friends now?"

TDavid isn't satisfied with the emphasis on the photo.

Posted by Anita @ 04/25/2005 08:07 AM PST

I don't think he apologized. "I'm sorry you took my comment wrong" is not an apology, and he goes on to insist that "belly achin'" was accurate.

Posted by Kai Jones @ 04/25/2005 07:47 AM PST

I was being sarcastic. I am quite sure that this group could put together one hell of a site.

Posted by Jake of 8bitjoystick.com @ 04/24/2005 07:48 PM PST

To move to a more anatomically pleasant portion of the body I believe the correct response is, "Talk to the hand 'cuz the MeetUp ain't listening."

There's probably a belly/navel piercing joke to be made here but somebody else wil have to do it. I'm tired and Desperate Housewives is about to start.

Posted by pops @ 04/24/2005 06:45 PM PST

I can certainly host a mailing list, or a message board, or events calendar, or whatever tools we might need, over at the Seattle Weblogs Portal.

Posted by Michael Montoure @ 04/24/2005 12:51 PM PST

I've been amazed at how much traffic this silly little rant has attracted. (I'm more amazed that anyone I'm not related to actually reads my blog.)

I think I'm far more frightened of what happens on Monday. In a way, I think we're pretty much at a resolution. Myles actually apologized this morning in the comments thread. But this is the Internet, and outrages quickly outgrow their creators.

And as I've said before, I'm agnostic about Meetup vs. Yahoo vs. DIY open source. I agree with Tom that a simple mailing list could suffice, but I think we need the promotion to bring new blood in. We're all bloggers, so if we did something collectively we could have a lot of impact.

So... where to? I'm going to post a follow-up shortly. At this point, I think the main issues have been resolved. We objected, Meetup responded well, Myles... not so well. We have apologies all around. It remains to be seen if my other two solutions get acted on.

BTW, any have the over/under on when either the Times or P-I calls Anita, TDavid, or me? I'll take Tuesday afternoon.

Posted by dw @ 04/24/2005 07:35 AM PST

I've never gone to a seattle meeting, but with all this commotion, I'm going to go to the next one. One of the benefits of this controversy is publicity for Seattle webloggers and a good reason to bring us all together.

Posted by bre @ 04/24/2005 07:09 AM PST

Jerry - as someone who gets way too much email as it already is, a mailing list solution doesn't work for at least me, but I will happily go along with whatever the group wants to do on this: mailing list, stay with Meetup and no change, etc.

As mentioned in my last comments, though, it seems like there is at least *some* serious interest in developing something on our own that could do much more than any simple mailing list could ever do and in fact could be an improvement over the current system being used.

We're bloggers, shouldn't we be thinking RSS, OPML, moblogging, podcasting, vlogs, etc, anyway? LOL :)

Posted by TDavid @ 04/24/2005 06:42 AM PST

Jake - my original post has had some developer interest so far, have you seen by chance?

Let me summarize here who so far as said they would/might help:

1) FranciscoIV - (out of towner) says he "has plenty of server space" and "can certainly register whatever domain" we might need/want/use

2) Chas - "I could provide gratis graphics skills."

3) Chris Pirillo - "I've got a good domain." We need one of those, I'll be contacting him to find out what name this is.

4) Dylan - "I am willing to offer my web dev/design skills as needed."

5) LJ Kyser - who is not part of the Seattle Blogger group but is willing to provide "some architecture/PHP/MySQL dev time."

It sounds to me like we might have enough help here to actually, seriously get this project rolling.

Does anybody know any hosting companies based in Seattle? This would be a perfect business opportunity for that hosting company to step up and host this project in exchange for advertising.

Would anybody be willing to work on this angle and contact a few Seattle-based hosting companies? I really think this is a good chance for a Seattle-based company to step up, but in the event that no companies are available in Seattle then we can certainly explore hosting companies outside the Seattle area (like FrancisoIV's offer).

I have made another blog post specifically targeting Seattle area hosting companies here:
http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20050424/1756/

It has been tagged with Technorati and Del.icio.us, so hopefully this one will grab some attention. Please consider spreading the word on your blogs.

I agree with you, Chas, the name must not have meetup anywhere in it or it's inviting legal trouble, but something with events/meeting would work good as neither of those words are trademarked. I'm curious what domain Chris Pirillo has. Hopefully I will get the chance to talk with him soon regarding that.

Ultimately, Sourceforge could be a good place to distribute the Events/Meeting code; certainly we should keep them in mind for down the road if/when we should get to that point with the Events/Meeting project.

Posted by TDavid @ 04/24/2005 06:19 AM PST

I'm with Jerry. This calls for a simple mailing list.

Posted by Tom Harpel @ 04/24/2005 05:52 AM PST

Why do I always miss the fun? Liz Lawley is in town, I'm playing good, serious student, and the meetup turns into social activism. Golly.

If I look closely, I am a free rider on Meetup.org and I don't feel too badly about it (in fact, I figure going through the nag screens is kind of payment). I suppose it is not important to worry about their business model.

It does mean we would have to figure out how to offset the cost of ongoing operation of any home-brew solution though, and worry a little about maintenance requirements. I agree it is an invitation for a lot of pent-up geek creativity. Why not disintermediate. I love options like that.

You think Chandler would have anything that could be adapted? For a single community (Puget Sound), it might not be too tough. Heck, a moderated Wiki might do it, along with a mail-list reminder system. Oh, I guess RSVPs are a bit more work.

Anyhow, nice comment setup. Is this new?

Posted by orcmid @ 04/24/2005 05:32 AM PST

I don't see why we really need anything more than a simple mailing list to announce/remind people of gatherings and an easy, well-publicized way to sign up for it. Conveniently, Chris Pirillo already has one set up for Seattle folks and has already used it to announce meetings, but there's no reason we couldn't set up a separate one. I could easily host it, as I have the software already. Then we just put signup forms for the list on all our blogs; probably we can get Michael Montoure to replace the Meetup blurb at seablogs with one too. Problem solved... no?

Posted by Jerry Kindall @ 04/24/2005 05:19 AM PST

Jake - if we do develop something (seems that option is getting higher on the list, eh?) then here's some ideas for open source names:

Waitin4Godot (Godot for short);
MeetMe@ (MeetMe for short);
SayWhen&Where; (SayWhen for short);
Group2Go (G2G for short);
SleeplessNSeattle (Sleepless for short)
(yes, that's a national generic term now);
WudULikeFriesWithThat (Fries for short);
EasyOnEasyOff (Freeway for short);
TakeMe2YurLeader (Alien for short).

So far, in addition to being somewhat amusing, this has set some of us to thinking about alternatives and that's a very good thing. Thanks Meetup for the impetus.

Posted by chas Redmond @ 04/23/2005 11:50 PM PST

Hmm... This post by Dave Taylor says what I was trying to say about the economics much better.

Posted by Jack William Bell @ 04/23/2005 11:19 PM PST

DM: Hmm... Let's see. Bitter goes well with citrus. I suggest several Gin and Limeades. (A truly wonderful concoction I discovered by accident many years ago.)

Personally I agree with Dylan; I find the whole thing kind of amusing. It's like a slow-motion train-wreck -- I just can't look away.

Look at it this way: The Meetup.com people have a right to make some money with their service. We have a right to decide it costs too much (in money or some other coin) and take our business elsewhere. So the goal for them is to make certain we find it cheaper to stay with them. And the goal for us is to minimize our investment in time and money. All pretty simple Macroeconomics.

Given all that it appears the Meetup.com people managed to screw up twice. First by charging the meetup organizers; the very people who were helping them grow their service. They should have found a way to reward those people instead! This element alone was a huge mistake and may cost them the entire ball of wax long-term. Being as I doubt they are total idiots I can only assume they tried all the other options (like charging the venues to be listed or selling advertising) and had no success. (To me this can only mean that there is actually no way to make money at this game and the best answer would be to shut the doors and stop the bleeding.)

Secondly, one employee then proceeded to stick his foot in his mouth so deep that they need to call in a proctologist to help him get it out. This kind of thing happens, but it is bringing immense amounts of bad publicitiy to Meetup.com at a time when they really don't need it. I'm half expection Dylan to get slashdotted over this myself. (Let's face it, his post was great. And totally right-on.)

So, basically we have a situation where Meetup.com makes a widely unpopular change in their service, without involving the customers in the descision process. (This is always a mistake with a social software service; after all customers and customer relationships are the only thing they actually have. You don't mess with that.) And then they have someone step up and say "Hey everyone! I am acting like a big dick! Now you can point to me and say see! This guy is living, wanking, proof; Meetup.com are a bunch of jerks!"

Even if it isn't true...

Posted by Jack William Bell @ 04/23/2005 11:09 PM PST

God only knows you can't find any web developers or programmers in Seattle or Redmond and it is not like they would go to some networking thing.

If we do make our own system we should open source it but just not call it anything "Meet Up" do to leagal reasons.

Posted by Jake of 8bitjoystick.com @ 04/23/2005 10:56 PM PST

Bitter.
I'm bitter.

Posted by dayment @ 04/23/2005 10:27 PM PST