BURKARD'S BLOG

I searched on the Internet months ago, and found no one keeping a blog about events in Columbus, Georgia. (Well, other than a 15-year-old high school student, and who knows how much he pays attention to the news?) So being the hip web-savvy guy that I am, I decided to start a blog of my own - chronicling happenings in the town I've called home for six years, as well as my experiences in it.

But be warned.... I used to have a humor service called LaughLine.Com, so my views may be a bit amusing. And the views
are my own; no one has paid me to present theirs. Pressured, yes - but paid, no.

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30 JUL 03: SHOW AND A DINNER

The city's newest barbecue restaurant opened Tuesday night at Columbus Park Crossing - "Smokey Bones." If there's anything the South needs right now, it's another new barbecue place....

(Let's see, this should reduce the waiting time for a table at Olive Garden by about five minutes - down to 55 minutes on weekends.)

To borrow a David Letterman term, I was NOT Mr. Opening Night at Smokey Bones. Instead, I had dinner at the "Four Points Sheraton" hotel on Sidney Simons Boulevard. I think one of the four points is that you tip the maid every morning.

I was invited to dine for free at the Sheraton, by the promoters of an "Internet Cash-Flow Conference." In fact, I was invited to this via e-mail and postal mail at least six times. I should have accepted ALL the invitations, and filled a van with hungry people from the House of Mercy.

The mailing for the Internet Cash-Flow Conference promised to show me how a home business on the web could make me amazingly wealthy. As someone whose old web site folded in less than three years without ever turning a profit, I went prepared to slither under my chair in embarrassment.

Bad sign #1: My confirmation e-mail said "directional signs will be posted in the hotel lobby." There was only one sign, for a company I'd never heard of - and the Sheraton didn't know how to spell "Azalea Room."

(By the way, Instant Message to the Sheraton: You need to check your brochure rack. The Tour de Georgia ended three months ago....)

Bad sign #2: The confirmation e-mail warned "all materials will be handed out before 6:00 p.m." Ha! The free business organizers we were promised were given us only as we walked out the door at 8:15.

Bad sign #3: The sign-in guy promised the Azalea Room doors would open at 5:50 p.m. They let us in at 5:55 - and the last several rows were cordoned off with yellow tape. As I said to the woman next to me, "Thankfully the tape didn't say 'Crime Scene' on it."

Our presenter was a man named Jason, who admitted right up-front his goal was to get us to sign up for a SECOND seminar - an all-day affair near the Atlanta airport in two weeks. We could avoid the $2,995 tuition by paying a mere $20 "processing fee" at this conference. How big is Jason's commission if some sucker pays full-price?

Jason admitted he'd read life-planning books by people such as Stephen Covey, but they didn't work for him. He says he arranged his life strategy, "and then life happened." Tell me about it -- I just got booked to work an all-night shift for the next several weeks.

Jason listed the results of some survey (I think it was his own) on the top ten reasons people make extra money. The bottom reason was to donate to charities - which I guess at number 10 makes it the tithing principle.

At one point Jason had everyone in the room close their eyes and "daydream" about what they could do with thousands of dollars in extra money. I did this a bit half-heartedly - because I thought he might sneak by and steal all the notes I was taking.

Jason declared the popular saying "knowledge is power" is NOT true. He said the proper equation should be "knowledge is value, and value equals income." Especially when you have knowledge of which stores off the best values....

Jason listed four characteristics of successful people - then had everyone in the room stand and affirm, "Yes I do" have those characteristics. Considering the first one is "a burning desire for money," [true] I felt awfully guilty and greedy.

As for making money on the Internet, Jason said anyone can have a web site - but the key is successful marketing. This was about as big a revelation as learning the key to winning car races is gasoline.

Another key to Internet success, Jason revealed, was offering things for free -- because it beats buying things. Absolutely! So our thanks to Jason for the free dinner - and we invite you to make this free blog a success by sending us a donation of any size.

Bad sign #4: Jason declared anyone can sell anything online, no matter what your skin color - because "the Internet can't discriminate." So why does the agreement to attend the second workshop rule out web sites which spread hatred?

It was 7:45 p.m. before the Sheraton staff brought out dinner - pasta salad, followed by turkey, ham and cheese sandwiches. After reading and hearing testimonials making thousands of dollars in monthly sales, I was expecting at least a sirloin.

SUMMER RERUNS: It happens I'd attended a different Internet business conference before, at what used to be called the Columbus Hilton -- and it made Tuesday's event look honest and virtuous. What follows is some of what I wrote about the previous one, for the LaughLine of 1 Nov 2000:

The free seminar was offered through one of those late-night half-hour infomercials. In fact, it promised a free buffet dinner before the seminar! We showed up and found a few slices of bread, ham and cheese, along with crumbs from a big bowl of potato chips. How disappointing - we figured these wealthy entrepreneurs would spring for at least one can of Sterno.

The seminar host was a man named "Dean," who had us all start by writing down these words: "Multiple Streams of Income!" When it comes to the Internet, the only things that came to mind were streaming audio and streaming video.

It was amazing to sit through a seminar about online income -- from a man who didn't illustrate it with a laptop, not even for "Powerpoint." Dean explained he used an overhead projector because modem lines in hotels tend to kick him off the Internet. So THAT explains those extra phone charges for calls we didn't think we made.

Dean suggested you could bring more visitors to your web site by getting free web pages from Internet companies, then simply putting links on them. We'd feel a little guilty doing this. We'd get 25 megabytes of web space, and use only five KILObytes of it?! Can we give the rest to charity or something?

The program promised to discuss "making money online" - yet somehow, Dean offered us special deals on gumball machines, discount travel plans and 18-karat gold chains! We attended a seminar on the Internet, and a flea market broke out.

About those gumball machines: Dean told the story of a friend who claims space in new businesses merely by wheeling in a machine and telling the person at the front desk: "I brought this for your snack room. Where do I put it?" We plan to test this trick this weekend - by taking two suitcases to a new subdivision.

Dean told the seminar we needed lots of web site "hits" to maximize our online income. As he put it: "The Internet is a numbers game." We agree - but how many are 0's, and how many are 1's?

The big deal at the seminar was a vending machine contract, a discount travel plan, membership in an online merchandise program AND a full-package business with a web hosting company. A $2,000 value, we were told - for 300 bucks! We left not buying anything, then drove to Burger King for an appropriate dinner: a Whopper.

BLOG UPDATE: Uh-oh -- the Sports Page signs promising to show football this Saturday night suddenly have changed to, "We're trying." Are all the city building inspectors on vacation this week?

COMING THURSDAY: Our week of pain concludes.... and a little bit of "tagging"....