What in the world you thinking of
Laughing in the face of love
What on earth you tryin’ to do
It’s up to you, yeah you 

John Lennon

Given the comment level and unique visitors at FoG the posts of the last two days have hit a nerve.  And it is amazing what people conjecture and say.

Lance can’t maintain his brand.

Lance is being all controversial on his blog to drive traffic to better sell sponsorships.

Lance please do get to know the value each event and it’s
associated organization has to local startup execution and learn which
events are startup-related and which are not.

Here is the real story.  

I was driving to work one morning.  I really don’t remember when.  But sometime in the last six months.  The Beatles were a little hot in my head due to the release of the remasters, RockBand, and Sir Paul playing in the Piedmont Park. I had run through my Beatles collection and moved on.  I was listening to Lennon Legend.

Listening to Lennon Legend in my car.  Driving to work.  Waiting for traffic to clear on 10th so I could make a left on Spring.  Track 16 came on.  Nobody Told Me.  When John started the second verse that I opened my post with the thought immediately popped into my head “just like the startup community around here.”

That’s it.  Why it popped into my head I don’t know.  A cognition gestalt.

But as I continued to attend these events the thought kept returning.  As people kept asking me to promote their events at an increasing level the thought kept returning.  As I had to start mentally scheduling when I was going to promote events so that FoG (40% of readers are not in GA) and my Twitter stream (it seems the majority of followers are not in GA) would not become event spammy Atlanta focused the thought kept returning.  As I noticed, as one commenter noted, that it was almost the same set of people that were attending these events the thought kept returning.  I ran the “Always something happening and nothing going on” line by some entrepreneurs and they generally agreed.

I wrote the article.   My motivation for doing so was plainly stated.  I believe “we need to concentrate our event efforts and become more deeply engaged so that startups can focus on more important things than the event of the day” and “fragmented efforts need to form into a core that can create critical mass.”

That’s it.

No statement that events do not have value.  No indication that I would cease to support events.  No harmful intent.  No evil power thing.

Peace out.