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TechTarget Gets Caught Spying on SYS-CON Media

TechTarget's "Director of Product Management" Attempts to Spy on SYS-CON Media's Conference and Trade Show Business
By Salvatore Genovese
Article Rating:
October 2, 2008 06:00 PM EDT
Reads:
 26,298

On Monday, July 28, 2008,  the SYS-CON Events team received an exhibitor inquiry from Brentwood, New Hampshire.

SYS-CON receives roughly a dozen exhibitor and sponsorship inquiries per day and the events sales team promptly replies to these inquiries. This particular inquiry looked a little strange though - there was no company URL, company email address, Website link, or any of the most common fields the team is used to seeing in a conference sponsorship inquiry.

SYS-CON Events sales team replied to the mysterious Scott Kelly. The team never heard back from Scott and decided to do a little Googling and here is what they found.

Can you believe it, Mr Kelly is actually the Director of Product Management at TechTarget, a technology media company that is struggling to produce a competitive show (with no luck) for the past couple of years and trying to compete with AJAX World RIA Conference & Expo?

No wonder TechTarget is in a pitiful shape when it comes to competing with SYS-CON Events. If you look at the actions of their senior management, you see they can't even manage to spy on their competitors, forget about putting together a show to compete with them ! :- ))

Shame on you Scott, you may want to read the related stories below.

From: Engin Sezici
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2008 2:04 PM
To: Scott Kelly
Cc: 'Events'
Subject: EXHIBITOR INFORMATION REQUEST

Hello Scott,

We will be delighted to answer all your questions regarding the sponsorship and exhibit opportunities at our upcoming shows.

Do you happen to have a company URL or a client name? We receive lots of spy mission inquiries from our competitors in the Boston area including TechTarget.

Thanks and best regards

--engin

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2008 1:56 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: AJAX WORLD EXHIBITOR INFORMATION REQUEST

The following request for Exhibit Information was placed on {ts '2008-07-28 13:55:09'}.

This person is interested in EXHIBITING at the Conference:
Name: Scott Kelly
E-Mail:
Title: Principal
Company: SK Consulting
Address:
City: Brentwood
State: NH
Zip Code: 03833
Country: UNITED STATES           
Phone:
Fax:

Published October 2, 2008 – Reads 26,298
Copyright © 2008 Ulitzer, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.

More Stories By Salvatore Genovese

Salvatore Genovese is a Cloud Computing consultant and an i-technology blogger based in Rome, Italy. He occasionally blogs about SOA, start-ups, mergers and acquisitions, open source and bleeding-edge technologies, companies, and personalities. Sal can be reached at hamilton(at)sys-con.com.

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Most Recent Comments
radixweb 08/21/08 05:58:36 AM EDT

Good Post....

Java Web Development.....
TechTarget Spy News 07/28/08 05:29:04 PM EDT

SYS-CON Events' sales team replied to Scott Kelly's exhibitor inquiry, but when they never heard back from Scott, they decided to do a little Googling and here is what they found out. Mr Kelly is actually the 'Director of Product Management at TechTarget,' a technology media company that is struggling to produce a competitive show (with no luck) and compete with AJAX World RIA Conference & Expo. No wonder TechTarget is in pitiful shape as a competitor of SYS-CON Events. Look at the actions of their senior management - they can't even spy on their competitors, forget about putting together a show. :- ))
TechTarget Spy News 07/28/08 05:11:55 PM EDT

SYS-CON Events' sales team replied to Scott Kelly's exhibitor inquiry, but when they never heard back from Scott, they decided to do a little Googling and here is what they found out. Mr Kelly is actually the 'Director of Product Management at TechTarget,' a technology media company that is struggling to produce a competitive show (with no luck) and compete with AJAX World RIA Conference & Expo. No wonder TechTarget is in pitiful shape as a competitor of SYS-CON Events. Look at the actions of their senior management - they can't even spy on their competitors, forget about putting together a show. :- ))