SEMPO Scandal – Mike Grehan Gives a Thumbs Down

Mike Grehan, one of the most respected figures in the industry, released an article today named Who needs SEMPO?. I found this by way of Andy Beal’s blog, where Andy does an excellent job of summarizing the article. I’ll pull out some quotes and then bring in forum posts by Barbara Coll (founder of SEMPO), to show how things just don’t click.

Mike’s article: “SEMPO has approved a $1,500 per week stipend to Ms Coll. This amounts to a salary of $78,000, to fund a part time effort from someone who already has a full time job running a SEM business.” Barbara’s Cre8asite post: “The Board of Directors have received no financial compensation for their volunteer position on the board of SEMPO.”

Mike’s article: “There appears at this stage to be no appointment of a board member for the UK. This, despite the fact that the UK is the second largest market outside the US.” Barbara’s Cre8asite post: “and we don’t official launch SEMPO in UK/Europe until June!”

Interesting post in light of this article.

The 8 of us that are the current Board of Directors started SEMPO. It was formed from a group of people who attended Danny’s Roundtable discussions at SES. We had been talking about forming an organization like SEMPO for over two years and finally I stepped up to lead the crowd. From the group of people who signed up to get involved in forming the organization, a few emerged as people who were willing to put some effort, time and money into it to get things started. That group became the Board of Directors.

We have by-laws that spell out the term of a Director and how they are to be replaced and/or elected. We will be opening a new Board member position up for members to nominate and then vote in. This will happen in 2004. Another Board member will be added from UK/Europe by London SES in June. This person will be appointed by the current Board based on their ability to mobilize volunteers to carry out the SEMPO mission in Europe.

The by-laws will be available to all members by the end of April (the SEMPO, Inc. year end) but will not be posted electronically. Not sure yet how we will handle requests for seeing the by-laws but we will figure it out by April 30, 2004.