Again just to be clear I never accused you of lying. Please correct me if I am wrong and show me where I said it.

I think you and I have a different definition of Spam. The email Outerjoin sent you was not Spam. A real person found your blog, via someone else’s blog roll, or some other means, manually found your contact info, and then sent you an email about an event that is directly related to your interest as a blogger and in fact your profession. They sent this email from their personal email account, signed it with their real name and invited you to reply.

That’s not Spam. Now the person who did it was ham handed and clumsy absolutely and has since apologized for it. I have also apologized for it. (not something a spammer would do).

The other email in question came from our newsletter. We use a third party service that has strict policies against spam, if we violated those rules (more than 1 complaint per 1000 emails sent) they would suspend our account. They haven’t so again we are not spamming people.

The newsletter has an opt out option and a spam complaint option. I have no idea how you got on that list, but your email address has been removed now and is in our suppression file. You won’t get any more newsletters from us.

Those are the facts as I see them and I can let bygones be bygones if you can 8).

As for responsibility I take for responsibility because simply its true. I’ve received two spam emails from people claiming to be representing BlogWorldExpo. I’ve privately been told that these were either (or both) sent in error or by people who shouldn’t have sent them, I had happily accepted that and thought it was the end of the matter, particularly given there is NO public record to correct (and by correct I mean add the response because end of the day the facts are true: I received spam claiming to be from BlogWorldExpo).

Rick
you’ve accused me of lying over the spam which constitutes a personal attack in my country, even if it doesn’t in you.

Having said that given that you feel so strongly about one Tweet amongst thousands I have done, I humbly and sincerely apologise for putting it up. It’s really not that big a deal, so I’ve got no issues at all with apologising over it. Now if only you’d stop accusing me of lying and leading this bizarre hate campaign against me!

Also, you say “If this was a major issue (which it never was) I would have blogged it: I didn’t and to this date I’ve done nothing more than repeat a rumor someone told me on my Twitter stream that is read by maybe no more than a couple of hundred people, most of whom I know..”

YOU DID BLOG IT ON TECHCRUNCH.COM which is read by nearly a million people via RSS according to their own Feedburner chicklet. It doesn’t matter that it was taken down – it went into the RSS feed and was read by probably hundreds of thousands of people.

So stop your foolish nonsense of repeating “rumors” and denying the blog post. Get some accountability and quit hiding under a rock.

You posted it, you wrote it, and now it’s out there. Deal with it like a mature adult – if you can.

As for these attacks that I’m some how desperate for attention is bizarre, I write for a publication with a readership in excess of 1 million people with over 600,000 RSS subscribers so I find the commenter attacks odd to say the least, and certainly seem to be motivated by my prior business relationships. There are far, far more important stories in the world and I’ve probably written 50-100 posts since this time, none of which related to your convention, and some of which have been quoted extensively in the mainstream media, including TV.

End of the day I corresponded with a number of people involved with your conference, received apologies and what not and was happy to leave it at that, particularly given that my original post is not live at the source. If anyone is attempting to gain free and cheap publicity it’s you Rick, not me.

As for the invite stuff on Twitter: I heard rumor, posted it on Twitter, heard from a number of sources that it wasn’t true and left it at that. If this was a major issue (which it never was) I would have blogged it: I didn’t and to this date I’ve done nothing more than repeat a rumor someone told me on my Twitter stream that is read by maybe no more than a couple of hundred people, most of whom I know….and I’d note there has probably been hundreds, if not thousands of tweets after that, none of which were in relation to the rumor, because that’s how little I cared for it. I understand and respect that when you’re involved in an event it’s easy to become rapped up and obsessed by it, but seriously Rick, get a grip and some perspective. It sounds like a great event and unfortunately I can’t attend, but I still wish everybody else the best with it, even if I’m now somewhat hesitant to extend those well wishes to you.

I will contact you directly to make sure you don’t get any more of those emails.

TC,

I don’t really know what you are talking about. Could you elaborate?