FAQs

What’s Your Story?

I’m a guy with a background in marketing who is getting increasingly tired of what passes for “marketing” on the web, particularly on Twitter, but elsewhere as well. I also know that doing it right is hard. There are perks – sometimes substantial ones – but the road is long and often friendless. I am here to be that friend.

In that spirit, I also intend to give half of any revenue generated by this and other marketing programs I’m involved in back to the Portland tech community. See this post on the origins of Deranged Penguin.

Are you for real?

Yes. I believe that if we redirect some of our standard, mindless consumption habits into a channel that purposefully kicks back to Deranged Penguin, we can raise some decent money for the local tech/open source/coder community.

Well, fine, but why 50/50?

Well, some small amount of revenue needs to go to feed the machine. That’s a pittance, though. I dunno. If we don’t make anything I will ask the Counsel of Giving Away Money to consider an adjustment in favor of giving away more. For what it’s worth, I hope to use quite a lot of my share to sponsor causes that I currently cannot support due to the economic downturn. I’m fine financially, but my discretionary income is nonexistent (that’s the cost of “fine” right now).

The Counsel of what now?

The decision process for actually using the money we collect is still undefined. I would like to enlist smart people to define it. You can email your application to the counsel or your recommendations. Note that I have already asked @turoczy, @marshallk, @geekygirldawn, and @betsywhim.

Who are you?

I am a deranged penguin.

Why the secrecy?

It’s actually not that secret. You can figure it out if you’re desperate. As for the why, I like personae. I like the idea of having this live separately from the other stuff that I’m doing. It’s so incredibly frustrating to see people join twitter, spam people, and wait to profit. They’re doing it wrong. I’d like to try to do it “right,” and for me part of that is an entirely other “person.” That way I don’t lose friends in my actual lifestream just because I’m deranged.