Plagiarism Isn't a Word You Throw Around

I've mostly tried to stay out of the whole Demo v. TechCrunch50 feud. I have friends on both sides and I think both events have done a lot for startups. But Demo needs to publicly weigh in on this immediately. I think anyone who knows Jason knows he wouldn't outright plagiarize something on a topic like this. Even people who loathe Calacanis will tell you he's a shrewd business man, and you'd have to be a dolt to truly lift almost every word from a piece. Other detractors will tell you Jason is an egomaniac. Would an egomaniac take thoughts from what he deems a lesser conference? No, he'd assume he had something better to say.

I happen to think -- behind his occasional performance art-like obnoxiousness-- Jason is a good person too. He and Michael Arrington genuinely want to help entrepreneurs and that's what TC50 is about, fireworks about taking down Demo aside.

The real egomaniac here appears to be Deb McAlister. I don't know her, but it's awfully haughty to think you're the only person who could have come up with things like "Show your product in the first 60 seconds." Not to take anything away from Jason or, I'm assuming Deb as I haven't seen the article she wrote, because these are great tips for an entrepreneur. But anyone who's had to sit through a large number of startup pitches would probably tell you some variation on a lot of this. It's hardly patentable material.

I recently heard Charlene Li speak at a Girls in Tech author chat and a lot of the advice she has for companies in monetizing Web 2.0 is very similar to what I've been saying in interviews and speaking gigs. I don't think either of us would shriek plagiarism, because some of it is just common sense if you've spent a lot of time on social media sites. You see what works and what doesn't. Also because Charlene and I are friends, and both genuinely want to help companies get better at this. Does it matter which one of us they hear it from? Not to me. We both had Web 2.0 books come out within a month of each other. I'll be the first to admit Charlene's is selling better than mine, and I couldn't be more happy for her. If you're truly coming from the point of view of doing something you believe in, (ie- helping entrepreneurs) these things aren't zero sum.

I think TechCrunch is right to demand an apology or the article. You don't toss out an accusation like this and then go radio silent. Even if the Demo side thinks the TC50 camp has been cutthroat in this feud before, now would be the time to take the high road.

Comments

[Alexander Muse]

Chris Shipley answered in a comment on my blog:

Deb McAlister has been a PR professional in the Texas-area for many, many years, and was, in DEMO’s earliest years, a colleague of my predecessor, David Coursey. To be clear, Deb has had no direct or official relationship with DEMO since 1996. Her comment here represents her own opinion and claims, not that of DEMO.

DEMOfall, which takes place Sept 7 – 9 (yes, that’s a plug, too), attracted a record number of applicants. Seventy-two companies have accepted our invitation to present at the conference, and many others sought a place on our waiting list. All of these companies understand that DEMO delivers tremendous value to companies that are launching products and need accelerated reach to customers and markets far beyond Silicon Valley.

The DEMO business model has been criticized by TechCrunch, and now by your site as well. The most important scrutiny, however, comes from entrepreneurs themselves. Seventy-two smart entrepreneurs evaluated the DEMO offering relative to every other launch venue and strategy available to them, and made the choice to buy our services because they believe - and in many cases had confirmed from past participants - that DEMO delivers tremendous value. Ultimately, it is the entrepreneurs, not a competitor, whose opinion matters.

If you'd like to see for yourself, Alexander, I'd be happy to arrange press credentials for you and any other serious blogger willing to do his/her own investigation into the DEMO value proposition.

Sincerely,
Chris Shipley
Executive Producer
The DEMO Conferences

[Alexander Muse]

Oh, and Chris rescinded his offer of credentials after he learned I wasn't a serious blogger..

[sarah lacy]

thanks for the comment alexander. I did see that, but I don't think that's really a proper response for an accusation like this. Demo should reach out to Jason directly, which is sounds like they haven't. And they should try to encourage Deb to prove the accusation or apologize. It's not enough to just shrug it off in one comment, IMHO. (I have no idea what is going on behind the scenes, so for now, I'll give Chris-- who I like-- the benefit of the doubt that Demo is doing more than this.)

[sarah lacy]

Here's the problem for Demo: It's been such a huge, public feud that a comment tantamount to a shrug on one blog sounds phony-- fair or not. (And yeah, I know Arrington picked this fight--that's also his personality and he gets a lot of flack for it.) If I'm an entrepreneur I'm sick of the bickering. Hell, as a reporter, I'm sick of it.

I agree with Chris: Just let entrepreneurs pick the conference they want to launch at and time will pick a victor. This could have been an opportunity for Demo to draw a line in the sand and really say "ok, no one using our name is going to go this far." that's not really what chris did. so it's less what they "owe" anyone i guess, since Deb made the accusation and chris has made some sort of statement. More an issue of character to me. Demo can't cry foul about the way it feels TechCrunch50 has behaved badly anymore if it lets this go, IMHO. They could defend Jason; they could produce the article at the very least.

[Shelley]

"Oh, and Chris rescinded his offer of credentials after he learned I wasn't a serious blogger.."

He was teasing you. Gah, I can't believe this mole hill was techmemed into a mountain.

BTW, Interesting way to twist it into being about your and your book, Sarah.

[Alexander Muse]

The whole 'pay-to-pitch' business model is quite a bit bigger than Chris' DEMO conferences. Scores of people run 'angel groups' offering entrepreneurs a chance to pitch in front of their membership for fees ranging from $300 to $3000 all over the country. The model is crazy as 'dealflow' is the currency of an investor (i.e. they should pay for it, not charge to see it).

I believe the whole barcamp/coworking movement has been the market's answer. Do you need to pay $18,500 to pitch you startup? No. Just host your own conference and pitch for free. Mike and Jason flipped Chris' model upside down. The best way to promote their event was to contrast it with the existing models - i.e. DEMO. I don't think their 'attacks' have been personal, instead I suspect they are truly philosophical. Chris takes her business personally and while that can be a good thing it means you may take all attacks personally regardless of how they are offered.

We are taking Chris and Mike's idea a step further and attempting to build a network of angel/entrepreneur groups designed to a) generate LOCAL dealflow for angel investors, b) assist entrepreneurs in the creation of fundable startups and c) provide investment capital for startups. Instead of charging angels and entrepreneurs a fee to participate require that they instead invest their time. The group will be organized for and by all of the interested parties (angels AND entrepreneurs) - i.e. borrowing from the barcamp movement...

At the end of the day, when the market moves against you, you have two choices - adapt or attack. Chris and her team have decided to attack - ultimately they will lose out - IMHO.

[sarah lacy]

shelley-

i like your strategy of avoiding reading about me by, um....coming to my blog? since it's called "sarahlacy.com" there's a good chance it might have something to do with me, just for future reference! ;)

alexander: thanks for the thoughts! there does seem to be the conference equivalence of the web 1.0 to 2.0 shift going on

[Jeremy Toeman]

Only question I have here is this: wasn't the plagiarism accusation done privately, by email? I didn't see any deliberate public activity taken here, which makes the claim that they should apologize/retract a bit... extremist.

Email is inherently private, not public, and the individual who published the private email is really the one who created the situation at hand...

[Joe Duck]

Hmmm - SarahLacy.com ?

Sarah! I thought of that name years ago!

You've made the good points here, though as Matt Ingram noted both Demo and TC benefit from all this free buzz.

[Shelley]

Sarah, your space, but the topic wasn't about you at all. I was actually rather impressed with how you could weave your book into a completely unrelated topic. I don't have that skill. But then, I only write tech books.

[LH]

@Jeremy: E-mail is not inherently private. Same as if I sent a letter to you. You could scan and post it online as well. The offline rule of "you can say anything, just don't put it in writing" applies online as well.

@Shelly: You must have some grudge built up from somewhere. You obviously missed the point of why the topic/book was referenced.

My general thought is that this is just a publicity stunt by Demo. Chris Shipley's response is more about promoting Demo than addressing the allegations.

[sarah lacy]

@Jeremy: it's a good point actually. BUT to me it's such a specific accusation you don't send it to a blogger and not expect him to act on it. in fact she was encouraging him to act on it in taking down the post/ not trusting that "source"-- i find her conviction in sending something so strongly worded and now total radio silence damning. and publicity stunt or no-- the whole thing made TC50 look good and demo look petty. so if demo cooked it up-- it was a bad move.

[Jeremy Toeman]

@LH - yes, i *could*, but there's a difference between me sending you an email accusing you of something and me taking out an ad in the local paper...

@Sarah - I just don't like to assume so many intents and motivations. It's easy to assume the scenario that the TC50 team painted, but that doesn't make it the *correct* one.

[Shelley]

LH No grudge against Sarah, and isn't the this whole thing really about attention? You're saying this is Demo's publicity stunt. I'm saying DEMO, Calacanis, Techcrunch, Muse, and even Sarah, in this post, are grabbing eyeballs, and all have something to sell.

I think there's little genuine outrage in this event, and a lot of hand waving. If there were real concerns, instead of publishing the email, Muse would have responded to the writer, and cc'd Calacanis. That would have treated the charge of plagarism "seriously". In addition, there was more than a little "outsider" versus one of "the folk" about this whole thing.

Frankly, once it was blasted to techmeme, it became a farce.

However, it's more interesting than the latest, mind-numbing pile-on about Twitter and GMail, so one must be grateful for what one gets.

[sarah lacy]

@shelley: august is a slow news month! ;)

[Shelley]

Isn't it Sarah?

I find myself yearning for the good old days, when every Friday you could count on a good, knock down hissy fit between two or more webloggers. Petty or not, dignified or not, at least it felt like weblogging still had a pulse.