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The "Charles Explains..." column write charlescarroll@learnasp.com with feedback
AspGuild.org: Vote Early, Vote Often. They don't want no stinking Https:// for your credit card
I LAUGHED when WROX Conventions and AspDevCon let you pass your credit cards through the Internet as clear text because apparently https:// was never installed on their servers. I wrote WROX - they never fixed it and never replied. It showed me they had someone with almost no technical expertise running their website. Don't ever submit a credit card to any site without https:// in the middle. Anyone between you and that Internet form (your ISPs, all the routers) will be able to swipe your unencrypted password.
Before you claim ASPDevCon has limited resources, I must tell you certificates cost $350. Since ASPDevCon's first 2 shows took in 500 people at $800+ each (that is $400,000 and expenses of maybe half that I guess) that amount wouldn't kill them. Of course there is no limit to their greed and stinginess from my observations. ASPDevCon demands speakers pay their own way travel expenses and own tickets (ouch!!!!). ASPDevCon is the only convention that proudly charged the designers of ASP and the Microsoft technical teams full price for admission even when they spoke there. Of course their greediness is why their show shrank (2nd show had zero growth, Atlanta show was smaller than first two) while WROX's initial convention was 50% larger than AspDevcon's second one; they spent on banner ads when ASPDevCon focused on free publicity. WROX at least paid their speakers and their transportation and built the awesome www.AspToday.com and participate in book giveaways. Stinginess is not one of WROX's flaws (they have other perhaps more subtle and sinister warts). Of course WROX basically only put any effort into their own authors speaking and treated non-authors very shabbily and vendors are still privately grumbling over some $$$ issues there. WROX beat AspDevCon because they were better than him, but as a show it did have it's detractors among the attendees (mostly due to speakers being forced to speak outside of their expertise by the heavy-handed Jan Kolasinski and folks). The contrast point here is the pro-active www.Aspconnections.com meeting this April where they actively contacted the best talent regardless of their affiliation.
As everyone knows by now, I am speaking at www.Aspconnections.com - they have treated me with a respect, honesty and responsiveness WROX never did. But that is the story for a future column -- why I will never join the Jan Kolasinski fan club.
Shameless Plug for a convention I did not create. But their pirmary contact Paul Litwin (who I had no prior business dealings with and just met by email a couple of months ago) is treating me and other speakers well and seems to be devoted to a high quality convention. Warning: I make some money if you buy a ticket from this link! Hear my keynote and technical presentations in Arizona late April 2000. Major ASP geniuses speak there: Ken Spencer, Mike Admunsen, Bill Hatfield, Michael Corning, Jeff Niblack, ... Be there or regret it later!
Recently after my editorial on AspGuild.org's deceptive practices they didn't dare respond, but they did make some immediate changes to a website that has not changed for years. They added:
The ASP Guild does not attempt to supply technical information, help or lessons on ASP programming. It will maintain links to the many fine websites that supply these services and offer a completely open policy for any ASP information websites to list their site for free. Its main purpose is to create a place for ASP programmers to share information and for companies creating ASP tools to survey the needs of the ASP programmers.
So now they focus on dropping one promise and still never delivering any of their other stated mantra. They also produced their typical convention spam (see end of mail) within 1 day of our publishing the article. I call it Spam because even though it mentioned awards, it didn't link to AspGuild.org -- mysteriously this "independent entitity related to no company or service" linked to an ASP Convention. How amazing and surprising.
They finally must have read the article so tried to dash together something that didn't look like Spam; good to see I spurred the guild to action after 2 years of pretty much exclusively selling the convention. They initiated an awards ceremony where people could vote for their favorite sites. Of course all the sites they nominated were basically stolen from my first article so I was flattered. These folks are shameless in their stealing.
Compare their International Section Awards to: http://www.learnasp.com/international Look Familiar?
The reason we don't have voting (though we will within 6 months it is on my wish list since we do get 17,000 visitors a day for 150,000 page views daily so we could get some decent participation) is because I of course knew it would be designed in a way people could not vote more than once. Designing such a system takes some time and thought, but if there is not such a system in place anyone can stuff the ballot box.
I voted for www.4guysfromrolla.com.
I voted for them 10 times.
All I had to do was click.
Why don't you try voting for 4guys as many times as you want: http://www.aspguild.org/TakeSurvey.asp?sid=156
Wow, these awards are going to be really fair.
Of course if AspGuild wants to respond I will print their response.
They wrote me to let me know my site was nominated.
From: Charlie Bass <cbass@aspguild.org> To: Unknown <charlescarroll@aspalliance.com> Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000
Congratulations!
You has been nominated at the ASP Guild for a TOP ASP 2000 award in the following category!
Top ASP English Language Help Site 2000
The categories for the awards are:
Top ASP English Language Help Site 2000 Top ASP Non-English Language Help Site 2000 Top ASP Tool - Programming Editor Top ASP Tool - Server Components Top ASP Tool - Server Performance Top ASP Book
Voting at the ASP Guild site (http://www.aspguild.org) will begin January 15th and run through April 15th.
Winners will be given a $1,000 credit at the next ASP Devcon, which can be used for anything like attendance, advertising in the conference program, a credit towards a booth, etc. AND will also be authorized to display the following logo on their website designating them as a TOP prize winner.
http://www.aspguild.org/data/association/aspguild/aspguildvotesite.gif
The winners will be determined by a public vote, not by an individual or committee. Voting will take place in three ways. One will be a survey at the ASP Guild website. The second way will be from "Vote for us" links on your websites. Clicking on this link will register a vote for you and greet them with a "Thank you for your Vote" page. This is completely optional on your part, but you may assume that most nominees will be directing votes via this method. If you choose to post a link on your website like:
http://www.aspguild.org/data/association/aspguild/aspguildvotetopsite.gif
The third way will be through clickthroughs on your emails, enewsletters, etc.
Please use the folowing code on your site to make sure you get the proper credit. This code is specific to you! Please don't force votes any other way. We will be monitoring our logs and if it appears that votes are being transfered any other way, the offending nominee will be disqualified.
Here is your code:
For emails, enewsletters etc.:
http://www.aspguild.org/voteasp2000.asp?t=S&a=4413
For your website:
Please grab this image and place it on your server: http://www.aspguild.org/data/association/aspguild/aspguildvotetopsite.gif
<A TARGET=_blank HREF=http://www.aspguild.org/voteasp2000.asp?t=S&a=4413> <IMG BORDER=0 SRC=yourserver/aspguildvotetopsite.gif> </A>
You may use these now if you want to test it, but all votes prior to January 15th will be deleted so that everyone has a fair opportunity to win.
We wish you the best of luck in the voting!
Thanks!
Charlie Bass ASP Guild International
My reply was:
I decline participation so there is no reason for anyone to vote for my site. I will refuse the award if I win and will not post ANY links to your site to encourage voting.
Charles M. Carroll [Microsoft MVP] ASP Teacher, disciple of Reiss,Trout & Cooper
The spam that followed my original editorial (notice it goes straight to convention site instead of AspGuild.org) was sent to all AspGuild members. So much for "Independence from any company, product or service" as AspGuild.org claims. Maybe conventions don't count!
From: ASP Guild International <webmaster@aspguild.org> Date: Mon, 03 Jan 2000 04:17:42 "GMT" X-mailer:
The ASP Guild International 2000 Top Site, Top Tool and Top Host awards will be presented in April! The public voting will be open from January 15th to April 15th, but we need to ask for your help now.
If you have a favorite ASP development tool/addon product, ASP Support Website or ASP Friendly Hosting service, we need to hear from you. The list which will make up the voting list will come from developers around the world.
Please respond to this email if you have a favorite you would like to nominate for any of these awards. We need the NAME, CATEGORY and URL as soon as possible.
Thanks in advance for your help!
Please come in and vote after January 15th.
http://www.aspdevcon.com