Three Requests to the SEM Industry from an "Outsider"

In what seems to be something lurking on the horizon for ages, the last week has seen some pretty nasty comments flying back and forth from people I would consider titans of the SEM industry. While I don't want to praise and insult in the same breath, there's a lot of pettiness and bulling each other up just for the sake of it, and for an outsider, this presents a huge obstacle to overcome if you want to "make friends", learn from people in the industry and climb that rope. So my thirtieth (which isn't a huge milestone) post is asking for advice, asking for niceness and asking for people to take their blinders off and develop the contributory nature of the industry. It really was like this once. Seriously.

Request #1: Try to be a bit more Jenny-From-The Block once and a while, and develop people in the industry. You were here once too. You were trying to crawl your way through the quagmire that makes up the industry, and someone helped you out and gave you a break. It sounds fluffy and paying it forward, but that's what the industry was good for once. People, in their recent push to be the best, biggest, and loudest look down their noses at newbies who, while not new to the industry, are new to the popularity contests that the cutting-edgeness of the industry provides in the form of forums and microblogging platforms.

Request #2: Try to meet at least one up-and-comer or even just a plain old n00b per conference. Some of the so-called experts in the industry surround themselves with clackers and hangers-on, and seem to be stuck in a rut of everyone telling them they're great - that's wonderful. Give back. Test. Try new things. Expand your horizons beyond pure SEO. You might even become better than you already are.

Request #3: Write for the sake of teaching, not to be applauded. I love the idea of Sphinn. I'd love to be Sphunn. Some of the best things I've seen, though - not Sphunn. Not even Dugg. They're from the people who, although very well versed in what they do, share for the sake of sharing. We've moved on from high school, right? Sure, life is one big popularity contest, but we're mature enough now to recognize that a lot of people have good ideas that aren't on the top 100 of "Greatest Hits" on Sphinn. Aren't we?

Look, I get we're all trying to make money. I'm very far from suggesting that we don't need to self-promote. We absolutely do. I really do believe however, that what makes the industry unique is the amount of collaborative power that we have. We don't use it though, because we're climbing over each other to be the biggest, loudest, rudest SEM out there. There are some great examples of people in the industry coming together to make a beautiful blog or center of knowledge - I'd like to see some more.