So here is one of my pet peeves about the IT world. Too many "technical" people consider themselves (pick one:) superior, smarter, more ethical, better than, their marketing counterparts. Hey people, everybody is selling something all of the time, even if it is themselves. Case in point, a recent "spat" between my bud Mike Rothman and another friend, Misha Govshteyn. Now Rothman and I go back a bit and have had our share of blog bad blood, but all in good spirit. Misha is a good guy too. Anyone who knows where to find a schmaltz herring in Houston after all can't be too bad. And my friend Farnum who serves as the peanut gallery in this story is solid as well. OK now that we have the players, lets lay out the story.

It seems that Alert Logic had a webinar titled _ Simple & Affordable PCI Compliance w/ Alert Logic. Mike thought that this was very misleading marketing from the slimy, no ethics, don't understand the real pain marketing folks at Alert. They are preying on the simpletons who are responsible for security and PCI compliance in the world and Mike delivers his full venomous wrath (according to Misha anyway, I bet Mike could be worse) on Alert Logic and their marketing team. Misha than responds with his own venomous wrath, that Rothman is literally full of baloney, a shameless self-promoter on par with Michael Savage. To add fuel to this fire comes Michael Farnum, who tells Misha in his comments that while he likes Alert Logic, "many manufacturers use their marketing as fly traps."

OK, here is my take. To Mike Rothman: come on Mike, you never did anything like that when you were a marketing guy? What are you some kind of reformed smoker? What would you have them name the webinar: "PCI is hard and our stuff can only help a little". Give it a rest. Also a little respect for the people they are marketing too. I think they realize what is what and can separate the bull from the cream. To Misha, hey at least Mike gave you some PR. I understand your frustration but instead of pointing at everyone else, say we stand by the name and that does it. Most of all to my buddy Farnum, dude, we know what you do, it is just a question of price. If those Venus Fly Trap marketing people weren't drawing people in, you would have to have a second job to feed the family and many not have the leisure time for blogging.

But seriously folks, marketing people have a hard job too. It is not that they are not technical or don't understand what is involved in PCI compliance or the like. It is their job to make these webinars appealing. I don't think most marketing people think of what they are doing is being misleading. They try to make these webinars deliver as advertised. The same way engineers try to make a product work as intended. Lets understand that it "takes a village" to develop, market, sell and support a product. Everyone has their job to do and for the most part do it the best they can and again for the most part with the highest of professional standards. Thinking that marketing people are slimy fly traps does a disservice to them, the people they market too and frankly comes across as self-serving arrogance.