From: Howard C. Berkowitz (hcb@xxxxxxxxxxxx)
Date: Thu May 02 2002 - 12:39:56 GMT-3
I hate to do anything to prolong this unpleasant thread, but a couple
of facts really should be put out.
1. I was a regular poster on Groupstudy well before I had any business
relationship with either CertificationZone or Gett. In both cases, I
was contacted by the CEO of each in response to what they had seen of
my posting patterns.
2. Gett and Groupstudy have not exchanged one cent.
3. Genium has never paid one cent to Gett, although I have a personal contract
with them. In the interest of rack time rentals, we do have a partnership
to allow their authors to develop scenarios, and to give their subscribers
convenient and discounted scenario access.
4. We have a similar relationship to IPexpert, although I receive no
compensation from Gett.
5. We are investigating other partner relationships. Gettlab (a subsidiary
of Gett, which is an established consultancy and VAR, especially in
healthcare), has a business model of, if you will, selling razor blades
(rack time) rather than selling razors (scenarios). In our consultancy,
we do a good deal of open source work and prefer it. Open source scenarios,
with value added support, is consistent with the way we've done things
for a long time.
6. Paul Borghese and I discussed my posts both regarding scenario design
and free scenarios with a very brief mention of a commercial service
being available. This was meant to be a community service, and by
community I include competitors potentially improving their scenarios.
I did some things recently such as running mini-classes on specific
scenarios, which seemed useful to a number of people, and I expect
to continue to do so.
7. I sometimes forget to attach my .sig, but I've never made a secret of
my affiliations.
8. I would invite anyone to look at the number of substantive, noncommercial
posts I have made to the list for several years. One of the most vocal
recent critics made his first post on 4/30, and has not made ANY technical
posts in this calendar year.
9. I'm not going to get into a challenge of what my qualifications are or are
not. I am perfectly happy to provide my resume to people with a legitimate
interest. But as far as certain charges have been made, I suggest people
contact people I've worked with, such as Jeff Doyle, and ask that his
response be posted to the list. I can also document having worked with
some of the figures that I have been charged with not knowing.
I would much prefer that we get back to what I am told that Rodney
King said after he became a landscaper: "Can't we just get a lawn?"
I intend to make contributions to this list as I have done. Of
course, there's a certain commercial interest, but I never expect to
make a post relating to commercial materials that are not generally
available to the public. But my major motivation is doing what I
think any true professional does: "Pay it forward" with respect to my
own mentors.
-- "What Problem are you trying to solve?" ***send Cisco questions to the list, so all can benefit -- not directly to me*** ******************************************************************************* * Howard C. Berkowitz hcb@gettcomm.com Chief Technology Officer, GettLab/Gett Communications http://www.gettlabs.com Technical Director, CertificationZone.com http://www.certificationzone.com "retired" Certified Cisco Systems Instructor (CID) #93005
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