Day: July 8, 2010

#lebrondecision: a few thoughts

Okay, so normally I let out-of-market team and player news fly right over my head and pay no mind to it. But given the unique circumstances around this event, I couldn’t help but notice, and I decided to weigh in.

Cleveland Cavaliers majority owner Dan Gilbert recently posted this open letter on the team’s news page on NBA.com, regarding LeBron James (better known to some as “King James”) and his decision to sign with the Miami Heat instead of continuing to, as the saying goes, dance with the one that brought him. In that letter, Dan berates LeBron using some choice words:

As you now know, our former hero, who grew up in the very region that he deserted this evening, is no longer a Cleveland Cavalier.

This was announced with a several day, narcissistic, self-promotional build-up culminating with a national TV special of his “decision” unlike anything ever “witnessed” in the history of sports and probably the history of entertainment.

And Dan goes on to imply LeBron’s actions are a “cowardly betrayal” and states that Cavaliers fans “deserve much more.” Later in the letter, Dan refers to LeBron’s move as a “heartless and callous action” after already making an owner’s most audacious possible promise:

“I PERSONALLY GUARANTEE THAT THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS WILL WIN AN NBA CHAMPIONSHIP BEFORE THE SELF-TITLED FORMER ‘KING’ WINS ONE”

I don’t particularly defend LeBron’s actions here nor do I necessarily condemn them. I have written about freedom many times in this blog, usually in the context of computer software, but this is about freedom, particularly that implied by the first word in “free agent.” In the free agent era, it is ultimately the player’s (LeBron’s, in this case) choice which offer to accept, or even whether or not to accept any team’s offer at all and retire as a free agent. Disloyal, cowardly, or otherwise, it is anyone’s right to pursue the best job offer and such decisions need not be based entirely on pay. It is easy for the casual sports fan to forget that this is an employment decision for the players, much the same as the average person chooses between two or more competing job offers from, say, different marketing/PR firms.

That said, having seen “LeBron James” as a promoted trending topic on Twitter, and not being able to avoid mentions of the situation without disconnecting from social media completely, I personally feel the publicity leading up to LeBron’s announcement was just a bit over-the-top. There’s promotion, and then there’s over-promotion. Yes, I’m known for my ego as well, and I’ve probably been guilty of over-promotion a couple of times myself. But that was not intentional.

It’s understandable, though, if it’s all LeBron and his PR team hyping his personal brand. I remember seeing at least one tweet implying the NBA was in on this as well; if so, that’s a tasteless and exploitative publicity move, and not something a sports league of the NBA’s caliber should partake of.

It remains to be seen just how much bad blood there will be between Cleveland and Miami and the fans of their respective teams. I may well comment on this again once the NBA season gets rolling. Hopefully, the Rockets will put on a show that’s much more interesting, though.

PayPal’s war on OpenCamp: a lesson in trust, business, and event planning

Until now, I’ve had no reason to write about Paypal. A couple of days ago, that changed. This is something every event planner should know about. Even if you are not an event planner by trade this could easily happen to you if you accept Paypal for payment on any kind of one-off event.

The OpenCamp blog posted today about how Paypal has repeatedly and continuously harassed those putting on the OpenCamp blogging/CMS conference in Dallas, TX, at the end of August.

John P. wrote this post, and states in part:

Over the past several weeks we’ve had 3-4 random calls from various people at PayPal, all of whom only identify themselves by their first name, none of whom have direct phone numbers or email addresses, and all of whom are asking the exact same questions over and over…

  • What is this OpenCamp thing?
  • How many people will be coming?
  • Why are you doing this?

Every time I go through the same speech with them. They are aware that we held WordCamp the past two years and have verified the previous registrations those years. They are aware that I personally have had a PayPal account for many years with them, and that I even have the Woopra account through them with far more volume than OpenCamp will ever have.

The article then goes on to explain this morning’s call from “Kathleen” in the “risk department.” As if that was not ominous enough (emphasis mine):

…they view events as being “extremely risky”. She told me that they would “rather close an account than have to eat a couple hundred dollars in disputed charges”. She went on to tell me that PayPal “doesn’t make much money off events”, and the bottom line was that they just don’t care about them.

Now, keep in mind the above: John is a long-time PayPal account holder and has helped host two WordCamps (WordPress-related convention). This is not just someone who signed up for Paypal this year and decided “okay, I’m going to run an event.” And they are still willing to come out and say in effect “we think events are extremely risky and don’t make us enough money.”

I’m not sure who to blame here. I don’t blame OpenCamp, that’s for sure. The theme of this blog’s past postings predisposes me to blame PayPal. I’m sure there are less sincere, less experienced, and less scrupulous event planners out there who have been part of the problem for PayPal. However, in the grand scheme of things, that’s a pathetic excuse to declare war on all event planners that use PayPal to accept payments, particularly the ones that have more than adequately documented that they are for real.

I view PayPal’s unwarranted attack on OpenCamp as “extremely risky” myself. This is not the kind of mess that a PR department wants to be left cleaning up. Shame on you, PayPal. It’s time to do the right thing: unlock the OpenCamp PayPal account, apologize, and quit treating event planners like second-rate customers.