Smith College Doesn't Get It

Last summer, I wrote a long letter to the editor and the associate editors of the Smith Alumnae Quarterly urging them to consider blogs as a way of promoting community among their alumnae. I didn't even get the courtesy of an acknowledgment which I thought was quite rude.

They did decide to commission an article about blogs and that's where Trish Grier came in. She was given my name as an alumna who blogs, someone to interview.

i spent some time talking with Trish about blogs in general, my blogs in particular and I urged her to come to Blogher which she did. I even reviewed her part about me for accuracy before she submitted it.

So you can imagine my dismay when what appeared in the magazine was riddled with so many inaccuracies. Somewhere between Trish and the editors, something happened which only demonstrates how little Smith College understands blogs and how poorly they fact-check what they do print.

1. While they list the blogs I write and contribute to, they didn't list the urls except for one. Bad form. Even online, the link is to the wrong url.

2. They say I have community boards, articles and resources. Well I don't. I have a blog. I have a blogroll. I have comments. I link to articles. That's what blogs do.

3. My site(s) are not a comprehensive resource. it's just me. I put together the links over a year ago and they all need some updating.

4. My product is only now in prototype, it was not done in 2003 when I started writing Legacy Matters. I had the concept and a plan that included blogs, but no software was developed.

5. I didn't begin posting regularly on Legacy Matters until 2004 and I started Business of Life a month later. I now have about 5000-8000 readers a day from around the globe.

6. I don't use my corporate site Estate Legacy Vaults to promote my software because it's not done yet. I will though. What I do write about is the legacy market and the potential market for my product among women and boomers.

You would have thought that the person who changed what had been written would have looked at the blogs or called me.

Not their fault, but my book has been retitled to Legacy Matters.
Not their fault either, but I'm changing the name of the software to iSol - Integral System for Organizing Life and Legacy.

Which is why I no longer write about either until book and software coalesce into a permanent form. Things change too quickly.