A recent challenge has made me realize that some things I thought were implicit need to be made explicit.
Yours
If you hire me to do some coaching, training or any other work you can be assured that your name and company name will never appear in my blog, twitter or any other public place. The most I will do is mention your name in private conversation. I will only violate this with your explicit permission i.e. we write an Experience Report for a conference. I will occasionally discuss issues that I see at a specific client in a general fashion, but you should find no specific mentions of your business. If you feel I’ve made a mistake contact me and I will correct it as quickly as possible.
Mine
If I hire you do some work on behalf of me or my business, I expect the same courtesy. I expect that all discussions whether over email, Campfire, IM, … are private and are between the originally agreed on parties. I don’t expect to see our discussions played out on your blog.
In general if we have a discussion privately over email (whether or not we have a business relationship) to be kept in the strictest of confidence.
If I discuss something on this blog or a mailing list, Yahoo/Google/LinkedIn groups then feel free to quote me. If you’re feeling generous please tell (so I can respond) and link to this site.
The only gray area is twitter, while its fun, all the ideas I and anyone else express are context free. 140 chars is cute, but no more. If you want to quote or think my ramblings unclear please take the time to contact me, I will be delighted to clarify.
The Problem
I employed foliovision early this year to help:
- Port my old typepad blog to WordPress
- Make some small changes to my WooTuits theme two support two domains (the original notesfromatooluser.com and the new agilepainrelief.com)
So far so good. They did that very well and made some other small changes as well. As it happens foliovision is also a design firm and they offered to design a logo for me. Naively I didn’t ask about price up front. Very quickly the price of the logo jumped to be approximately half as much again as the originally quoted price for the job. I asked them to stop work on the logo and on reflection realized that the pill they showed in front of the logo didn’t reflect my ethos. My approach to coaching and consulting isn’t swallow a pill and it isn’t one size fits all. I work in an adaptive, iterative fashion in keeping with the “Inspect and Adapt” principle of Agile. Instead I created my current logo: a person carrying a doctor’s bag because its closer to reflecting me.
I also promised the people at foliovision that I would eventually write a followup post to thank them for time and to recommend them to others. Unfortunately I haven’t gotten around to that.
Imagine my surprise when I noticed a blog post that mentioned me by name, discussed my business choices and denigrated my own logo. I contacted folivision to raise my concerns but they were dismissed. I would quote Alec’s remarks to me in private, but that would violate my promise above. Suffice it to say I can no longer recommend foliovision since you don’t know whether they will treat your discussions with any confidentiality.
To be clear I acknowledge that this site needs some design work, its on my backlog. At the end of the day I put more time and effort into helping clients, personal contact and writing. Less into the site itself.
No related posts.
Hi Mark,
I’ve had another look at our article. To be honest, I don’t see any confidential information inside. It’s just an interesting case study on a spec job and on what design is worth. Our Typepad to WordPress service represents exceptional value. The price for the logo was in line with the lower end of market prices: we just wanted to help you build your brand and have your site look its best.
Confidentiality is an interesting question. We certainly wouldn’t share our clients’ business secrets. And as far as I can see we didn’t do so here.
I’m sorry our logo didn’t work for you. I still think what we had in mind looks great although we’d have to spend some time working your new longer tag line into it.
Mark,
Seems like you were dealing with someone who has either limited business experience or really bad customer service. Either way, that post from foliovision is way out of bounds.
btw, the logo they tried to design for you is pretty lame. You did the right thing to reject it. You might try crowdspring.com for logo design. It is a lot cheaper and often better quality.
Mark,
I commented on the Foliovision site. I agree completely that regardless of your experience with that company, they overstepped their bounds by stating your name, company and the logos in question without your permission.
I suppose, though, that there was never any formal agreement preventing them from doing so. Your only solace may be that if they continue to call out their clients in this manner, they will find that the supply of said clients will dry up rather quickly.
Where’s the professionalism? Where’s the humility? Can they not accept they could possibly be wrong about something? I will certainly be steering clear of those guys in the future.
Hi Mark,
Must admit I am amazed that Foliovision have not grasped your point.
Your name got mentioned.
The fact they are at odds with your decisions got mentioned.
Alec makes the “case study” excuse.
Well that doesn’t wash because it is common courtesy to ask permission before publishing any case study.
Even referring to Company XYZ can cross the line if it is easy to work out who Company XYZ could be.
Alec does not get to choose which of your information is confidential. You do and you alone.
What they could have done was relate their story generically without names or logos.
Their point would have been made but no-one would be able to work out who they were talking about.
And you paid them for the public criticism. Never again.
Cheers
Dave
Thanks to all my friends who’re far more articulate than I. There where ways Foliovision could have written about this without referring to me directly or using logos. They choose not to.
Interestingly several people have commented on the blog and the comments were either deleted (in one case) or ignored in another. That’s cowardly.
Alec – you might not want to admit you’re wrong, but shouldn’t you publish all non-spam comments on your blog? If someone writes a comment critical of me it gets published. As long as its not rude or insulting I publish everything.
I am really old-fashioned about this stuff.
Fotovision should not have done a piece without Agile Pain Relief’s permission.
Agile Pain Relief should not have done a blog post in response.
Business comportment has not changed despite social media.
Pick up the phone and have the private conversation to gain understanding. Which I am assuming is a recognition that Fotovision’s Case Study should not be there without Agile Pain Relief’s permission of use of name. Then an agreement on how to ‘fix’ it in a fair and reasonable way. Maybe something like taking down the Case Study post and putting up an entry on not publishing case studies without permission of use of name showing lesson learned.
This is between Fotovision and Agile Pain Relief. Because Fotovision made a mis-step doesn’t mean it should be ‘fixed’ with another one. Airing dirty business laundry does not show comportment on anybody’s part. Including commenters dying to get into the fray.
This post is not the modern technique for solving relationship problems. That is the goal, right? The irony of an unconfidential post about confidentiality isn’t lost on me.
Mark and Alec need to get on the phone or meet in person. This is basic. Everybody else stay out of it. Lets all try to be ‘agile’.
Anne – thanks for the comment – I’m in agreement to a point. Foliovision is in Slovakia and I’m in Ottawa so a face to face meeting was out. I exchanged about a dozen emails with Alec over a 48 hr period and nothing got resolved. He feels that nothing that Foliovision did was wrong. At that point I decided to sever my relationship with them and at the same time make a point about confidentiality. You’re right the blog post didn’t solve a problem, but it does warn future Foliovision customers of what might happen to them.
Mark – whatever about the case study. Let’s talk about the important stuff.
But first I need to preface this with a disclaimer; I am no designer and my blog is as/if not more ugly than this one.
The two points;
“Mark chose the WooTuits theme, which we thought was a great fit.”
Sorry. Wootuits is Ugly, cluttered and “brandless.” It’s way to generic to have any affect on a reader or viewer, except maybe to turn them away. Reduce clutter, provide the single clear focus, show your natural personality via the design and layout (photos anyone?).
and
“Mark told us he doesn’t think logos or design are a substantial reason that a client would choose a supplier or not.”
Absolutely. Your content is mostly read via RSS anyway. Quality and high value work comes via work of mouth. As if ANY serious buyer is making a decision based on the design of this site!
Which means expensive of difficult design work will not be top of your list, probably ever.
Your vendor’s own words implicate them much more than your post.