The Blog I promised regarding Webgrrls and its For Profit Status

When I first showed interest in Webgrrls I naturally assumed that it was non-profit. I chose webgrrls becuase I had subscribed to their pretty extensive lists many years ago and had found it to be a nice community of individuals. I subscribed to the Silicon Valley List and it was quite active. Honestly, I thought it was just a list and never thought about attending an event. Anyway when I decided that I needed to jump start my career I started looking at different organizations to join. I looked at webgrrls and their website had not been updated in several years and linked to Passion Parties. I still was interested in joining so I followed the link that said are you interested in being a chapter leader and filled out the form. This was prior to my joining any organizations. It took Kevin six months to respond to my email. He said he had been bitten by a spider whcih in the course of my taling to him he used the spider bite to explain away everything that had happened to him. From what I could glean from communicating with him and looking at the chapters without websites that webgrrls was almost out of business but since I am never one to just call anyone out I thought it was worth my time. So we communicated over a period of weeks until I received the chapter license which said it wasa for-profit.

I questioned him intensely concerning this. I told him that my roots were in social science as a matter of fact I had taken twenty-hours in non-profit management and really in my heart could not understand the for-proft structure that he was advocating. He went into the spill about women deserve to get paid for their time and he was not running a charity etc. By the time we had gotten to this discussion about for-profit versus non-profit I had discovered that Kevin Kennedy was a liar and barely believed anything that came out of his mouth, so I listened and listened and honestly did not hear one rationale for justifying why webgrrls was not a non-profit. As far as I could hear from listening to him Kevin was only out for Kevin. Okay I said now that you are a fo-profit what would the chapter get back from you if we gave a profitable event. He told me that first of all if we gave a profitable event all of the money would come to him and he would redistribute it. I said ok we've given an event and it was profitable and wanted to give another event what part of the money would we get back to give the event. He said he would prefer that we fund our event by ticket sales and probably would not get back much. I said I don't understand what's the motive for doing this to work for you for free and that a chapter had to get somethinng back for the work that had been done. He finally said previously there had been a 60/40 breakdown with 60 percent going back to the chapter and fourty percent going back to Webgrrls but he was going to change it to where fourty went back to the chapter and sixty went back to him. As I listened to him talk and talk I just drowned him out and honestly if we gave an event had planned to ask the sponsors to pay for things like the caterer. At this point I knew I would not be deposting much money into the hands of this person. Anyway I wanted to be a webgrrl so I signed on anyway and attempted to go back to the core basics of webgrrls teaching and learning, networking etc. As for the email flap I know its about money and to this date Kevins use of webgrrls to pursue money has not netted anything but who knows MSH must have promised him a lot becuase he has gotten on her band wagon. Just call him Mr. Spider Bite Professional can't answer email for six months, can't think becuase a spider bit me, or travel around the country for a sponsored tour. Finally when MSH first began to write me negatively I discussed this with him and he said don't worry the Wall Street Journal had written negative articles about him and he had dealt with it. Anyway I hope they write some more. Finally I think someone with the last name of Kennedy is involved with technorati, it has gone downhill in three months it is not the technorati I rememeber several months ago. Maybe technolgy is not the realm for folks with the last name of Kennedy I don't know.