Its not even being hidden anymore.

You deserve it slave.

All I ask from you in the future is that you try to spell my name correctly. A-L-L-A-N.

You screwed up man – just own it and stop with the rationalizations

I’m an advocate for nonprofit techies, not nonprofit consultants or vendors. As a result, I think a lot about the relationships between nonprofits and those they pay to get their IT work done. I think the relationship between nonprofits and consultants is probably more equal in terms of size. This is probably the kind of collegiality and level of respect that you see on a daily basis in your consultant practice. I have to tell you that it’s a different thing entirely when nonprofits have large vendors. They’ve got legal and marketing departments that act in concert together to try to produce profits for the vendor. It’s not always the case that this is in the best interest of the nonprofit.

In this environment, I don’t see how collegiality really holds together well. Respect doesn’t scale to large corporate entities. I try to give respect where it’s due but clearly the unequal relationship between nonprofits and vendors requires a more subtle take on respect here. For instance, take a closer look at that cease and desist letter that was written to me and tell me if David Crooke responded as a person or as someone from a vendor. Most single consultants like yourself can’t rely on a battery of corporate lawyers. And that’s where respect simply evanesces into thin air.

It’s not that I don’t give respect to people but when you’re talking about a corporate entity or someone who claims to represent a corporate entity, I’m not so sure that respect is the first thing on my mind. So no, it’s not that I reject collegiality outright; it’s that it puts people who advocate for nonprofits in a remarkably difficult position. You would have nonprofit advocates muzzle ourselves but there would be no equivalent placed on a corporate legal/marketing department.

On a more historical note, I think it would be safe to say that single-person consultancies are not exactly well represented in the NTC Science Fair. Have you not missed the corporatization of nearly all of the vendors that serve nonprofits? This is indicative of a maturing marketplace. I’ve seen the same thing happen in the Web industry. I still remember when the earliest incarnation of Adobe Flash then known as Futurewave was just a 3 person table outside of Netscape Devcon. Flash forward years later and it’s now the tip of the spear for Adobe’s software initiative.

Times have changed, Michelle. As the nonprofit marketplace matures and grows, I sense that the nptech blogosphere will change and grow with it. Collegiality will be more and more subsumed into a more general understanding of the corporate nature of our vendors and more attempts to get behind the veil will keep occurring. I hope to be a part of that and you should be too.

And one commenter was right – Allan did not target Convio, he targeted David Crooke in particular.

Yes Convio is a for profit, and they profit from non-profit organizations. So do many companies and people (including myself, by the way.) That does mean that they are accountable to their clients, and to the sector as a whole. That doesn’t mean they are not worthy of being talked about respectfully.

And to “anon” who thought Allan’s comments were respectful – how would you feel if you were the target of those comments? That’s a good litmus test.

Again, I don’t have any intention of letting Convio, or any company, off the hook for security issues – their feet should be held to the fire for that. But you don’t have to trash individual people in the process.

Re-read the post. Allan wasn’t casting any aspersions on Convio, he was aiming directly at David Crooke, who is a person. Along the way he trashes Scott Ganyo, linking to a post that in no way supports the “unceremoniously dumped” smear.

Furthermore, Allan’s own statements aren’t even backed up by the Convio links he posted. Maybe the “ex-Convio” Crooke is still on Convio’s management page because he wasn’t actually “unceremoniously dumped”? Who knows, since Allan didn’t bother to check before he trashed a couple of people.

Allan’s made some pretty good posts in the past, but he’s had a tendency to lunge for the scurrilous whenever he can spot it. I wish he’d stop trying to be a non-profit version of Gawker, since he just comes off as a monkey flinging poo.

However, it’s clear that respect should be held even between individuals and corporations. That is why I apologized publicly to David Crooke despite the fact that he did not accept the apology originally. Couple that with the legal analysis of this issue over at uncivilsociety.org, you can see that the legal leverage was all mine to use or misuse as I saw fit. My apology was more or less an abdication of that. If that isn’t respect, I don’t know what it is.

So no, I don’t agree that I was disrespectful towards David Crooke but I would like to think that in my actions since the post you would see that I have taken the more difficult route of trying to tamp down inflamed passion both on my part and on David Crooke’s. There were many possible strategies I could have pursued in trying to seek an end but few of them would have resulted in the somewhat more amicable end that has been reached. If I were truly disrespectful, I’m pretty sure this would have escalated and at that point, I would certainly side with Michelle’s concerns.

Please don’t mistake a company, that makes it’s *business* out of making profit from nonprofits, to be in the same ballpark. To do that would be taken in by the marketing.

Underneath the covers is the same business climate that is present in every other for-profit organization I have worked for. They are in it to make money — make no mistake about it.

That being said, to take the high road and give them the respect that *should* be given to all companies, profit or non-profit, would be the best advice. However, I don’t feel the comments Allan made are in any way disrespectful; quite the contrary, I believe they are responsible, especially when related to security concerns.