Whatever is happening to SMA-UK?

In July last year Mike Grehan blew open a big tin of flies when he launched a critical attack on SEMPO.

The original articles no longer exist, but Barry Schwartz luckily preserves some of the details.

Although the stipend awarded to Barbara Coll was one key complaint, another was that SEMPO were failing to communicate to members.

And now SMA-UK are in real danger of failing on the same issue of communication.

SMA UK: failing to communicate?

The SMA movement was born in response to the perceived failure of SEMPO to represent the SEO industry, with SMA-UK taking a lead in forming a real trade association in stark contrast to the apparent self-serving interests of SEMPO.

I’ve spoken to people like Barry Lloyd, Mike Grehan, and Ammon Johns, both during and after it was officially formed, and the ideas behind it are not simply great, but also being implemented.

It’s a serious Trade Association that I’m confident will offer a real and useful dynamic to the UK SEO industry. I signed to join up.

However, shortly after my company changed legal identity and the invoice was invalid - and since then I’ve found it impossible to get in contact again:

- The e-mail contact form does not work
- No replies from the two e-mail addresses listed on the contact page
- No reply from the accounts e-mail address on the original invoice
- No confirmation of the application form sent

Additionally, general lines of communication on the site are either restricted or closed without real reason:

- SMA-UK uses a third-party blog at Blogger, so people without a Blogger ID cannot post replies

- Even after all this time, SMA-UK has not even opened a basic public forum

Issues such as failure of e-mail contact is primarily a technical issue and easily resolved – once I can get the committee to act on it. But the inability to provide alternative channels of communication is a more worrying trend.

Using Blogger means that SMA-UK members would need to be affiliated to Blogger just to make blog comments, which makes absolutely no sense at all. I have never used Blogger - and I shouldn’t have to just to communicate on the SMA blog.

Additionally, it is pretty incredible that after all this time SMA-UK has not even set up public forums - if the organisation is public enough to have an inaugural meeting at the London SES, have a public website, and talk to the BI about setting up a standard just for SEO/SEM, then it is public enough to have an open public forum online where people can ask about joining, discuss the organisations activities and plans, and generally open up avenues of communication.

Any suggestion that the server platform will not support such applications for proper communication shows that the fault is with the choice of server platform in the first place - it remains imperative for any webmasters to ensure that their server OS will support the applications that they need to use to have a fully functional site. If the tools are missing from Windows then obviously a more common Linux/Apache configuration would make more sense.

This isn’t idle arm-chair criticism - if SMA-UK need help then I’d be happy to help in whatever way I can – I have server capacity to offer, and would be more than happy to set up and maintain whatever they needed on the site, and would support where I could any other initiative to get involved from anyone else.

However, it remains a key issue that without such open channels of communications, SMA-UK are in danger of simply being closed off from the public and membership body – and in doing so, setting themselves up for some of the same mistakes that SEMPO made.

SMA-UK has a lot to offer, and I know there is a lot of action happening behind the scenes – but what is the point of trying to make conversation online when you don’t even allow other people to join in?