When I sent out notices about Debbie Horovitch HOA event on Forbes Online I asked for feedback. Ammon Johns in his...
When I sent out notices about Debbie Horovitch HOA event on Forbes Online I asked for feedback. Ammon Johns in his curmudgeonly wisdom does just that.
I've turned off comments so you can comment at his post.
Originally shared by Ammon Johns
Today was kind of a sad day for G+ for me.
It started a while back with a promise. Debbie Horovitch made a promise about a Hangout on Air that was going to represent G+ and HOAs to a wider audience. She'd embedded the code for the youtube live-stream of a hangout into a page on Forbes, and made some bold claims for how it would do a lot of great things.
There's no way on earth I can see the shallow, self-serving, shambles that was actually delivered as anything but a breaking of that promise, and worse.
There were warning signs, of course.
This was supposed to be the Ultimate Guide to HOAs, yet on the panel were none of the people you'd expect to call on for such a topic.
Let's make a quick list of the people you'd call on given the topic. For sure you'd invite Ronnie Bincer right? You'd also want Scott Scowcroft who's experience of not just his own HOAs but professionally repurposing those of others is second to none.
You'd want Yifat Cohen for sure, as someone who does so much with embedding her hangouts into her own site, and has been invited to Google to talk on the topic.
You'd want someone like Mark Timberlake and John Ellis who are both pushing the technology to the absolute maximum that HOAs can take.
You'd want someone like DENNIS N. DUCE who creates crazy engagement strategies for businesses that you would not think would benefit from a HOA.
You'd want someone like Mark Seydel and Mark Vang who have been intimately involved with hundreds of other people's HOAs in their role in running schedule guides and driving traffic.
You'd want Christine DeGraff and Mia Voss and dozens of others who have been working HOAs for a while and are instantly recognizable to those who are even casually interested in HOAs.
Can you guess what all of these fine people have in common?
Yup, they were all most noticably not on this hangout.
That right there is a big warning sign.
Of course, like many, I shrugged and thought I'd give the benefit of the doubt and tune in anyway. After all, Debbie Horovitch is apparently representing all of us on Forbes and showing off this great platform we have. This involves all of us.
Tuning in a couple of minutes late, the show hadn't begun. At ten minutes late it still hadn't begun and nobody involved posted an update.
Fifteen minutes late. Then 20 minutes past time and still nothing... People had started to leave.
Now, of course, G+ and Hangout Technology in general has a warped sense of humour. It loves to fail on us only when we least want it to. Technical glitches happen. But no matter what level of glitch, I have never seen a show go that far late without an official update, even when they've had to reschedule and arrange the whole thing as a fresh event because the app crashed and won't let anyone back in.
When it finally did start (somewhere between 20 and 25 minutes late I think, I'd stopped looking at the clock by then) I had to assume that the 'technical issue' had been that Debbie's computer had had a meltdown.
Because when it started at last, we were treated to the terrible image quality and camera angle of a laptop's built in camera, pitifully churning out around 3 frames of video per second giving us a choppy, jerky streamed view of the underside of Debbie's chin.
There's certainly no way on earth that someone would get a chance like this, to stream on Forbes, and have planned to use a crappy, insufficient laptop, no decent camera, and instead of overlays and graphics, some hand-written flash cards on paper, right?
So, a computer meltdown and having to resort to a totally unsuited laptop explained the delay. Okay. No problem.
Well, apart from the fact that the rest of us would have had other very experienced producers and hosts on the panel right from the get-go who could have started the show for us on time while we fixed stuff, and ensured that the show looked good, even if our tech didn't let us look so.
That failure will be explained shortly...
So, its begun, and we get a bit of a monologue about who the show is aimed at, and what its about.
After a few minutes, Debbie Horovitch mentions that the show "started a few minutes late"... Not apologetic sounding really, just matter-of-fact and brushing the whole issue of people being sat waiting for almost 25 minutes.
Okay, again. Breathe. That's her way of dealing with the soul-destroying feeling most hosts would have about failing their audience. Sure, if it were me I'd be effusively apologetic, and offering both my apologies for the issues, for not having better backup plans, and of course, thanking the audience remaining for sticking with it.
And inside I'd be dying at having made G+ HOAs look so bad to an outside audience, really disappointing the Plussers who'd bought into my promise that this would be great branding and exposure for the platform itself.
Debbie isn't me. Different strokes and all that. Breathe...
Then came the real clincher that had me (a self-confessed #UnabashedCurmudgeon ) fuming to the extent that I wouldn't just want her off my lawn, but off my entire plane of existance...
We got Debbie Horovitch telling us how one of her aims in this hangout was to help her position herself as an Expert on HOAs and a thought leader in their use!
This person, running the worst debacle of a HOA it has ever been my misfortune to see, who was so badly misrepresenting the social media platform I love, and who was making the whole of HOA-dom look so very unprofessional thinks she is an 'expert'
And thinks that the level of thought (i.e. no thought at all apart from herself) would inspire others to follow the lead of her thinking!
Oh My Effing Gee!
What we have is a woman who told others offering to help with technical issues to shut up and leave it to her, because she wanted to be seen as the only 'expert' on her show.
We have a woman who decided to put the whole image of our platform on the line with no co-hosts, no more experienced people like all of those listed above and so many others I didn't mention, all so she could be seen as the only expert on the panel.
And this is precisely why any self-proclaimed 'expert' or 'thought leader' is so utterly derided and despised.
Today, one woman let ego, pride and desperate desire to fake it til she makes it put her failures on the whole of G+.
Get the F*@k off my lawn!
I've turned off comments so you can comment at his post.
Originally shared by Ammon Johns
Today was kind of a sad day for G+ for me.
It started a while back with a promise. Debbie Horovitch made a promise about a Hangout on Air that was going to represent G+ and HOAs to a wider audience. She'd embedded the code for the youtube live-stream of a hangout into a page on Forbes, and made some bold claims for how it would do a lot of great things.
There's no way on earth I can see the shallow, self-serving, shambles that was actually delivered as anything but a breaking of that promise, and worse.
There were warning signs, of course.
This was supposed to be the Ultimate Guide to HOAs, yet on the panel were none of the people you'd expect to call on for such a topic.
Let's make a quick list of the people you'd call on given the topic. For sure you'd invite Ronnie Bincer right? You'd also want Scott Scowcroft who's experience of not just his own HOAs but professionally repurposing those of others is second to none.
You'd want Yifat Cohen for sure, as someone who does so much with embedding her hangouts into her own site, and has been invited to Google to talk on the topic.
You'd want someone like Mark Timberlake and John Ellis who are both pushing the technology to the absolute maximum that HOAs can take.
You'd want someone like DENNIS N. DUCE who creates crazy engagement strategies for businesses that you would not think would benefit from a HOA.
You'd want someone like Mark Seydel and Mark Vang who have been intimately involved with hundreds of other people's HOAs in their role in running schedule guides and driving traffic.
You'd want Christine DeGraff and Mia Voss and dozens of others who have been working HOAs for a while and are instantly recognizable to those who are even casually interested in HOAs.
Can you guess what all of these fine people have in common?
Yup, they were all most noticably not on this hangout.
That right there is a big warning sign.
Of course, like many, I shrugged and thought I'd give the benefit of the doubt and tune in anyway. After all, Debbie Horovitch is apparently representing all of us on Forbes and showing off this great platform we have. This involves all of us.
Tuning in a couple of minutes late, the show hadn't begun. At ten minutes late it still hadn't begun and nobody involved posted an update.
Fifteen minutes late. Then 20 minutes past time and still nothing... People had started to leave.
Now, of course, G+ and Hangout Technology in general has a warped sense of humour. It loves to fail on us only when we least want it to. Technical glitches happen. But no matter what level of glitch, I have never seen a show go that far late without an official update, even when they've had to reschedule and arrange the whole thing as a fresh event because the app crashed and won't let anyone back in.
When it finally did start (somewhere between 20 and 25 minutes late I think, I'd stopped looking at the clock by then) I had to assume that the 'technical issue' had been that Debbie's computer had had a meltdown.
Because when it started at last, we were treated to the terrible image quality and camera angle of a laptop's built in camera, pitifully churning out around 3 frames of video per second giving us a choppy, jerky streamed view of the underside of Debbie's chin.
There's certainly no way on earth that someone would get a chance like this, to stream on Forbes, and have planned to use a crappy, insufficient laptop, no decent camera, and instead of overlays and graphics, some hand-written flash cards on paper, right?
So, a computer meltdown and having to resort to a totally unsuited laptop explained the delay. Okay. No problem.
Well, apart from the fact that the rest of us would have had other very experienced producers and hosts on the panel right from the get-go who could have started the show for us on time while we fixed stuff, and ensured that the show looked good, even if our tech didn't let us look so.
That failure will be explained shortly...
So, its begun, and we get a bit of a monologue about who the show is aimed at, and what its about.
After a few minutes, Debbie Horovitch mentions that the show "started a few minutes late"... Not apologetic sounding really, just matter-of-fact and brushing the whole issue of people being sat waiting for almost 25 minutes.
Okay, again. Breathe. That's her way of dealing with the soul-destroying feeling most hosts would have about failing their audience. Sure, if it were me I'd be effusively apologetic, and offering both my apologies for the issues, for not having better backup plans, and of course, thanking the audience remaining for sticking with it.
And inside I'd be dying at having made G+ HOAs look so bad to an outside audience, really disappointing the Plussers who'd bought into my promise that this would be great branding and exposure for the platform itself.
Debbie isn't me. Different strokes and all that. Breathe...
Then came the real clincher that had me (a self-confessed #UnabashedCurmudgeon ) fuming to the extent that I wouldn't just want her off my lawn, but off my entire plane of existance...
We got Debbie Horovitch telling us how one of her aims in this hangout was to help her position herself as an Expert on HOAs and a thought leader in their use!
This person, running the worst debacle of a HOA it has ever been my misfortune to see, who was so badly misrepresenting the social media platform I love, and who was making the whole of HOA-dom look so very unprofessional thinks she is an 'expert'
And thinks that the level of thought (i.e. no thought at all apart from herself) would inspire others to follow the lead of her thinking!
Oh My Effing Gee!
What we have is a woman who told others offering to help with technical issues to shut up and leave it to her, because she wanted to be seen as the only 'expert' on her show.
We have a woman who decided to put the whole image of our platform on the line with no co-hosts, no more experienced people like all of those listed above and so many others I didn't mention, all so she could be seen as the only expert on the panel.
And this is precisely why any self-proclaimed 'expert' or 'thought leader' is so utterly derided and despised.
Today, one woman let ego, pride and desperate desire to fake it til she makes it put her failures on the whole of G+.
Get the F*@k off my lawn!
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