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CCGAL
I attended Pat O'Bryan's Unseminar4.
SNIP

Thank you for your posts, CCGAL. I thought what happened to you was extremely unprofessional and quite brutal.

My comment is related to something you wrote that I find very alarming.

"Unseminar".

The use of this term disturbs me. For those who don't know, the whole Unconference phenomenon comes out of the tech world. It has its roots in ideas promulgated in the 1980s, but it's really been picking up steam these past few years, especially in social media circles. BarCamp and FooCamp are maybe the best-known unconferences.

The people who founded these unconferences, and who run them, are extremely serious, well-informed, brilliant professionals. They possess actual knowledge, and they've developed the unconference format because they believe it ensures participants learn what they've paid to learn. It's also much more fun.

So when I see fraudulent hacks aping terms that genuine professionals use, I am concerned.

Lakhani, Mack, and all these frauds, they're slick but they're rather stupid. They seem not to understand that genuinely intelligent people exist, present their work to the public, and give value for money. They think if they skim a couple of books and make videos talking about how brilliant they are, well it's just like actually producing useful work.

I mean, Buckminster Fuller? How pretentious can you get? What's next? Ben Mack on Charles Darwin? Dave Lakhani on Robespierre and the Implosion of French Revolutionary Ideals?

Spare me.

People go to actual universities to learn about these subjects, and actual professors (whom this crowd no doubt dismisses as fossilized stuffed-shirts) teach them.

A professor is not someone who spends 1 week-end a month in the library and decides s/he's smart and his/her work is valuable. Other people make those decisions. You can't self-ratify, the way you can in this shadowy netherworld of persuasion and "good intentions".

And that's how it's beginning to look to me. There's reality(say, American Indian sweat lodges) and then there's a shadow world (Wealth Guru death lodges).

Lurking in the shadows can get you killed.

Postscript: I also note with alarm that Tim O'Reilly is one of the 6 people Byron Katie follows on twitter.

Unseminars are nothing like unconferences. The closest comparison I can make, based on my own experiences, would be a "how to" workshop taught by a person who knows how to do something. I have no idea how Pat came up with the "Unseminar" name, though I've wondered if it was related to 7-Up's "Uncola" branding.

Ben Mack was one of the children who spent time with Bucky as described in the book Fuller's Earth: A Day With Buckminster Fuller And The Kids. Having read the book, I was curious about Ben and how that experience helped shape his life. I don't think we can blame Bucky for Ben's behavior.

Ben, Pat, and Dave have all exhibited unprofessional behavior towards me. My reaction is that for the rest of my life I will not knowingly or willingly be in the same room with any of them, nor will I ever attend, purchase, or promote anything any of them have anything to do with however remote that connection may be.

I guess that makes me ... (drum roll please) ... an UNFAN. <-- LOL!

As an aside, I had to google Tim O'Reilly and also found it a bit creepy that BK is cosying up to this uber-geek. He could be vulnerable to her schtick, given his stated interest "His honors thesis explored the tension between mysticism and logic in Plato's dialogues."

o'reilly bio

Let's hope his real world experience keeps him on the logic side of the tension in any dealings with BK.

Quote
CCGAL
Unseminars are nothing like unconferences. The closest comparison I can make, based on my own experiences, would be a "how to" workshop taught by a person who knows how to do something. I have no idea how Pat came up with the "Unseminar" name, though I've wondered if it was related to 7-Up's "Uncola" branding.

Unconferences are workshops in which people share information about how to do things.

And I do have an idea about how Pat came up with the name.

Quote
Christa

Unconferences are workshops in which people share information about how to do things.

And I do have an idea about how Pat came up with the name.

I'm sure you know a lot more about unconferences than I do, given that all I know is what I was able to Google after you mentioned them. After reading about them, I had the idea that the people attending were also the presenters, sharing what they had learned about said topic of conference. Other than the introductions around the room, and perhaps the (erroneously named, in my opinion) "master mind" break out sessions, there wasn't much sharing going on from the floor at U4, and most of the presenters were actually doing sales talks.

I'm not an expert on Pat, or his unseminars, and I have no insight into why or how he chose to name his internet marketing workshops as he did, but I don't see the benefit of naming the workshops after something that most of his target market would never have heard of, much less have participated in. His self-professed persona as a "broke blues guitar player" doesn't exactly place him in academic circles in the minds of those he's selling to. I didn't even realize he'd gone to college until he started spewing venom on Twitter.

Be that as it may, you could be right about the unconference connection and I respect your opinion. I hope my attempt at humor with my UNFAN comment wasn't offensive to unconference folks; it just just supposed to be funny, and no offense was intended.

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CCGAL

Quote
Christa

Unconferences are workshops in which people share information about how to do things.

And I do have an idea about how Pat came up with the name.

I'm sure you know a lot more about unconferences than I do, given that all I know is what I was able to Google after you mentioned them. After reading about them, I had the idea that the people attending were also the presenters, sharing what they had learned about said topic of conference. Other than the introductions around the room, and perhaps the (erroneously named, in my opinion) "master mind" break out sessions, there wasn't much sharing going on from the floor at U4, and most of the presenters were actually doing sales talks.

I'm not an expert on Pat, or his unseminars, and I have no insight into why or how he chose to name his internet marketing workshops as he did, but I don't see the benefit of naming the workshops after something that most of his target market would never have heard of, much less have participated in. His self-professed persona as a "broke blues guitar player" doesn't exactly place him in academic circles in the minds of those he's selling to. I didn't even realize he'd gone to college until he started spewing venom on Twitter.

Be that as it may, you could be right about the unconference connection and I respect your opinion. I hope my attempt at humor with my UNFAN comment wasn't offensive to unconference folks; it just just supposed to be funny, and no offense was intended.

I thought the UNFAN comment was very funny.

CGGAL, what you found on the net about unconferences is quite accurate. They do involve many participants sharing knowledge, or many people shaping the course of experts' talks, and they are meant to be highly collaborative.

By calling his gang-bang sales pitch an unseminar, this Pat person both triggers the minds of people who know about unconferences and places himself in a category in which he doesn't belong.

I think he places himself in the wrong category to feed his own intellectual pretensions. When I viewed the videos of some of the people we've discussed in this thread, the degree to which they see themselves as titans of erudition really stunned me.

Read some of Dave Lakhani's earlier posts; his ego is more inflated than the Goodyear Blimp. He thinks he's a big time cult researcher because he grew up in a cult; it's like a guy who's a janitor in France moving to the US and thinking he's qualified to teach Proust.

But try to tell him that. We did, and he hasn't been seen on this Forum since.

None of these low-rent covert marketing hypnotizers would ever be invited to an actual unconference, because they have nothing of value to share. But in their own little shadow universe, they can pretend that they're offering unconferences.

They can label their tawdry, abusive sales pitches "unseminars" and voila-- it's like they're at TED, or something.

(Sadly, I think some of the high-end abusers could worm their way in. That's why I'm concerned about any possible Tim O'Reilly-Byron Katie connection. And Werner Erhard's definitely got his hooks into someone at Harvard. But these are exceptions.)
'
Also, the word "unseminar" might not mean anything to the audiences Pat currently attracts, but it says something to me about the audience he'd like to attract. (It also suggests that some of these sleazy online marketing people, or their advisers, have a great deal of tech savvy.)

As these frauds become more wired, they appear to be reaching out to audiences who spend a lot of time online, as the unconference crowd does. This crowd is small, but they have the kind of money these shills would want. And they are often opinion leaders-- get one, and you might get many more.

I like to think that most people who are savvy enough to be at the forefront of innovation are too savvy to be fooled by the Dave Lakhanis of the world, but I've observed that the opposite is true.

Elite workers in all fields, in addition to having all the vulnerabilities and frailties that come with being human, are often quite naive and trusting. You don't develop a lot of street smarts pulling all-nighters at Princeton, and a stratospheric IQ isn't necessarily protection against predatory covert hypnosis.

I've heard that some of the "Pick-Up Artists" feel their techniques work best on intelligent women, because those women often use their intellects to override their instincts and intuition. Sounds reasonable to me.

So that's why the label "unseminar" caught my eye. Not because of what it says about Pat's current audiences, but because of what I think it says about Pat's aspirations.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/2010 05:46PM by Christa.

Quote
Christa
They can label their tawdry, abusive sales pitches "unseminars" and voila-- it's like they're at TED, or something.
<snip>
So that's why the label "unseminar" caught my eye. Not because of what it says about Pat's current audiences, but because of what I think it says about Pat's aspirations.

That makes perfect sense to me now. I heard Pat mention once that he'd like to be invited to TED, although I don't remember if it was in reference to being a presenter or an audience member. Plus, very recently he made a point of posting several comments to the Whirled Musings Blog that CosmicConnie writes - and after reading everything, I came away with a distinct impression that he's now trying to let his critics know he has more education and intellect than his seller's persona (broke blues guitar player) would suggest. [cosmicconnie.blogspot.com] {sorry I don't know how to link to just where his comments begin, so it's a long scroll to find them.}

Thank you for the explanation - I found it to be fascinating. I'm going to enjoy reading the rest of the forum posts - although that's going to take some time, as there's such a HUGE amount of information here.

Today, Ben Mack has Tweeted:

Rick Ross denies me an interview despite his community calling me a fraud, a cult leader and a danger to society. He's afraid of me perhaps? (about 3 hours ago from web)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

23rdian RT @HowardWCampbell Cult "researcher" RickRoss starts w presupposition he can tell churches from cults. Does God tell Rick directly? (about 8 hours ago from web)

[[url=http://twitter.com/benMack/]twitter.com/BenMack[/url]]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/14/2010 07:05AM by helpme2times.

What is wrong with Ben Mack?
Can't he read text?
No one obviously called him a "cult leader" or a "danger to society".
Ben Mack fabricated that, he made it up in his head, and is being deliberately dishonest about it. Why? To try and use "contrast" to exaggerate accurate criticism of his methods, into a deliberate distortion.
He's trying to manipulate and persuade and confuse.
Ben Mack, the master of baffling with bullshit.

You also see how Ben Mack has warped, deliberately, the word "community", instead of talking about an open web forum where accurate criticism of his methods has been posted.

You can see how he also twists his alleged request to interview Rick Ross, and then implies that he is "afraid of him"?
What is there to be afraid of from Ben Mack in an interview? His master skills at covert persuasion? His alleged NLP skills which he does not have?
No, of course not.
Perhaps his taste in hats?
[www.clientsinternet.com]



There is more material above that needs to be analyzed about the TACTICS used by Ben Mack in his seminars, and some of them he has copied from Richard Bandler, and others. Kicking people out of a seminar and berating them is a TECHNIQUE. That is a beat-down dominance technique used by many LGAT seminar leaders, they pick a few people out, and throw them out of the seminar for no reason, as it establishes Dominance for the leader, and submission for the customer.
You can be certain Dave Lakhani does that one too. Lakhani has even tried that one the internet, trying to exert dominance over people with bully tactics, which of course backfires.
People aren't as stupid as Dave Lakhani and Ben Mack think they are. No one cares that Dave Lakhani says he is 300 lbs, who cares? That might matter in a pie-eating contest, but not in the real world.


The only correct word Ben Mack used in his Twitter post was FRAUD.
Ben Mack advertises himself as a "Dr" and being an expert in various things he is not an expert at, like NLP.
Ben Mack has fabricated his book sales, and rankings, and many other things detailed in this thread.
Ben Mack calling himself a "fraud" is the only accurate thing he's said so far.

Except the other thing about tricking people to step into your greased chute sales system. [forum.culteducation.com]

Speaking of fraud and advertising, when are Ben Mack and Dave Lakhani going to PROVE WITH FACTS, their alleged training in NLP?
They make claims, with NO PROOF of their alleged certifications in NLP, which they do not have, obviously.

Some people just make that stuff up, to try to promote themselves. Some people just lie, and say they are NLP experts, and they are not. They read a book, go to one seminar, then they lie and say they are experts, and try to scam people for money.


So Ben Mack calling himself a "fraud" on Twitter, that is accurate.
Ben Mack is an expert, an expert in confusion induction, bullshitting, exaggerating, and self-promotion.
Ben Mack primary technique seem to be...Baffle Them With Bullshit.
Ben BS Mack.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/14/2010 08:09AM by The Anticult.

'Today, Ben Mack has Tweeted:'.....

Dr Logic, I presume.



Tony Robbins managed to get a TED spot, must be some kind of signifier of acceptance by the great and good, the movers and shakers of this world. Think of the marketing opportunities that open up once you get into that network, and the social proof that would rub off from being in such august company!