Someone e-mailed me this morning and said: "I liked your website better before when it was stand-alone. I just don't like it under the heading of MeetingsNet. It gives me the feeling that you are less than independent. Perhaps, you are less than independent and I just didn't realize it before." Thank you, kind reader, for bringing this up. I've been meaning to talk about this for a while.
OK, I liked it better when face2face was on Typepad. A lot better. Aesthetically, it was a lot more reflective of what this blog is than it is wrapped in our corporate header (I lost on that one, but at least I won on not putting the red bar down the side that we have on the rest of our site!). We'll be redesigning our Web site in the next couple of months, and I sincerely hope face2face soon will once again look and feel more like what it really is: My personal and independent take on what's going on in this industry.
I started face2face pretty much independently of our company (I did get the OK from corporate, since I planned to identify myself as someone who works on the Meetings Group magazines and Web sites, not just some yahoo spouting off about meetings). But as the disclaimer buried way down on the right side says, everything I write on face2face is my own opinion. No one copyedits it (although our copyeditor is a regular reader and does point out my many typosI gave up on writing in Word and spellchecking ages ago and just post directly these days.) No one reads anything I write before it's posted to the world, and no one has asked me to take down anything I write here.
I use common sense when deciding what to write about, and of course take heed of all slander, libel, etc., laws. Otherwise, it's whatever I think you all might be interested in hearing about, or whatever I think is interesting, which I hope you do, too.
The reality is that this blog is my labor of love for this industry (no, blogging isn't in my job description, and I don't get paid for doing it. Yes, I am certifiably insane). I like that we can let people know about it with links from our e-newsletters and home pages—otherwise, it would probably have a readership of my dad and mebut the thoughts, opinions, words, etc., are my own. Always have been, always will be. I'm grateful to have bosses who trust me enough to let me run free here, but run free I do. Barefoot and tossing daisies over my shoulders with a wild gleam in my eye, no less.
The day someone tries to tell me what I can and can't say here is the day this blog ceases to exist. Of course, then I'd have to start one up anonymously elsewhere, because I'm too hopelessly addicted to this thing to stop now!