{"id":2594,"date":"2014-07-07T17:18:20","date_gmt":"2014-07-07T23:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/incongruentelements\/?p=2594"},"modified":"2014-07-07T17:18:20","modified_gmt":"2014-07-07T23:18:20","slug":"heading-to-tam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/incongruentelements\/2014\/07\/07\/heading-to-tam\/","title":{"rendered":"Heading to TAM"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--\nP { margin-bottom: 0in; direction: ltr; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); widows: 2; orphans: 2; }P.western { font-family: \"Times New Roman\",serif; font-size: 12pt; }P.cjk { font-family: \"Times New Roman\",serif; font-size: 12pt; }P.ctl { font-family: \"Times New Roman\",serif; font-size: 10pt; }A:visited { color: rgb(128, 0, 128); }A.western:visited {  }A.cjk:visited {  }A.ctl:visited {  }A:link { color: rgb(0, 0, 153); }\n--><\/p>\n<p>Today I&#8217;m busy packing to head to The Amazing Meeting (TAM). Good grief. Getting everything done before I hit the road is quite the feat.<\/p>\n<p>First, it pretty much takes a very large shoe horn to pry me out of my office these days. (I&#8217;m looking directly at you, Mr. Ed Clint.) \ud83d\ude42 Second, I&#8217;m not exactly a social butterfly, but my husband is coming so I shouldn&#8217;t become too cantankerous. Third, I&#8217;ll miss my little pups. How will they ever survive without me? \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>Bah. It&#8217;ll be fun. In fact, it turns out I get to sit in on one of the panels discussing various aspects of writing, blogging, and such.<\/p>\n<p>This is my third skepticism conference. Sure, I&#8217;ve been to scores of events concerning publishing, writing, and particularly marketing\/copywriting. But those were pieces of cake&#8230; terribly fun, to be honest&#8230; in comparison to my narrow conference experience in the skeptic community.<\/p>\n<p>The first skeptic event I attended had a very sparse audience. It was supposed to be an annual event, but quickly died. The conference wasn&#8217;t exactly &#8220;fun,&#8221; but quite informative.<\/p>\n<p>When the day ended, I had a headache from concentrating, sifting through copious jargon, wading through thick accents, revisiting subjects I haven&#8217;t thought of since&#8230; well&#8230; my college years. It felt like a lot of work. We skipped the second day.<\/p>\n<p>The second skeptic event was larger, but I found myself carefully guarding my tongue, always fearful I&#8217;d say something wrong. Sadly I have a dismal track record when it comes to asking (evidently) inappropriate questions. After reading the harassment policy, I half expected to see armed guards patrolling the main hall, billy club in hand, shooting attendees the stink eye. It didn&#8217;t happen, but in my twisted imagination, I would have found the whole scenario amusing.<\/p>\n<p>During that same event, a few attendees #hatehatehated when, during a panel discussion, I suggested blog commenters be treated respectfully so as not to escalate conflict. As a marketer I can&#8217;t help but wonder what outsiders think when they peruse comment threads. Also, I&#8217;m still puzzled as to why anyone would treat their commenters&#8230; someone who visited their site, took time to comment, evidently cares about a subject&#8230; without a modicum of respect. If we&#8217;re skeptics, shouldn&#8217;t we act respectful towards other points of view?<\/p>\n<p>But that&#8217;s just me&#8230; the eternal PR person. We skipped the final day of that seminar.<\/p>\n<p>And now, I&#8217;m off to seminar number three, TAM. I&#8217;m heading to Vegas with no expectations, an open mind, hoping it&#8217;ll resemble the good old days of copywriting seminars where I came home exhilarated, excited, with a boat load of memories that make me smile to this day.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re attending TAM or live near Las Vegas, shoot me an email. I&#8217;d love to meet you in person and enjoy a cuppa joe together. I super-love talking shop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today I&#8217;m busy packing to head to The Amazing Meeting (TAM). Good grief. Getting everything done before I hit the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[27],"class_list":["post-2594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-opinion","tag-my-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/incongruentelements\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/incongruentelements\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/incongruentelements\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/incongruentelements\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/incongruentelements\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2594"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/incongruentelements\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2600,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/incongruentelements\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2594\/revisions\/2600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/incongruentelements\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/incongruentelements\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/incongruentelements\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}