I just have to come out into the open and share my plight: I am being blackmailed by the IamLUG’ers ….. coerced, forced into bonded labor without the possibility of parole … my freedom of laziness is under attack … Oh, the humanity!

As I have written earlier, I was foolish enough to sign up for IamLUG 2013 (May 6 – 7, St. Louis, MO) and also hand in an abstract for my REALLY excellent content that I mean to share – mainly on the finer points of Swiss cheese fondue interspersed with some vaguely useful tidbits on IBM Connections administration.

Now imagine my reaction when I get a mail from the organizers telling me that they expect me to actually WORK. I mean – they want an early abstract or else! They want us to hand in our valuable and priceless and totally awesome content by April 15 – AND we need to blog and tweet and all that social stuff – or else!

Now, I normally don’t have an issue doing the Twitter, I would even add the horrid hashtag #IamLUG to my tweeties, but this is to much:

Start tweeting and blogging if you want a couple extra days on your slide deadline

Wha??? … the gall, the impertinence! How about this zinger:

Slide deadline will be moved to April 15 but if you blog and tweet we will make yours April 22

Followed by this one – a real shocker (it really hurt me to the core):

If you don’t tweet, we will force you to eat Victor’s horrid cheese fondue with the stray dogs of St. Louis as company

I will admit it – it made me cry …. the psychological hurt was … hurtful. So, under all this duress, stress and psychological pressure I relent – even a man as strong as I am can only take that much:

• IamLUG is the best – and it is free as in FREE BEER – thank the damn sponsors for that, they are trying to ruin your liver
• IamLUG is taking place in the coolest place in the world – the city that has half of a McDonald’s sign (they never had the money to finish it – they call it and ARC, no .. ARCH …)
• IamLUG will have some REALLY AWESOME content about cheese fondue and a few other mildly interesting technical presentations
• IamLUG has this thing called TICK IT ON – oops! Freudian mishap – I meant TACKITON where you can learn some stuff – how to make cheese fondue quality content it ain’t – but maybe, just maybe if you want to know something about XPages and that development jazz – it might be worth the paltry money they ask for it … just maybe. (I will still offer  my services as a fondue connoisseur to liven up the bland XPages content if needed . . . )
• IamLUG has the greatest presenter in the western hemisphere present, and a few other decent enough folks who can ramble on a bit
• IamLUG is full of fun …. join us in this years challenge to see who can single handily bring down the wireless network with Pinterest postings of kitten pictures
• IamLUG is just so great .. and it is free as in FREEDOM of speech. And who does not like to spew forth a whole litany or malarky AND get a standing ovation for it?

I think I have now done my damn part … my totally awesome presentation will be in their damn in-box on APRIL 22 (take that, IamLUG’ers!)