FEEDING THE PR MACHINE

FEEDING THE MACHINE: HOW PR FUELED THE DOT COM REVOLUTION

And How To Prepare For The Next Hyped Thing

That was the working title of a book i drafted and never finished about the heady days of dot-com PR, about my experiences in Miami during the late 1990s and in Silicon Valley, where i was commuting to and fro for about 6 months.

I'll post some of the more interesting sections and also provide up-to-date comments on a periodic basis. Here's a taste:

Theme:

• This book will explore how PR created the buzz to keep feeding the machine (PR= VC money and higher stock prices) during the Golden era of Dot-com PR from 1997 to 2000, when I was involved with launching about 10 pure play dot-coms and working with several technology companies.
  
  
• It will also explore how the New Economy hype was driven by many factors including the obvious greed and ego of the Dot-com CEOs, an eager media buying the hype, unsuspecting public buying the stocks and at the bottom of the it all were people like me at PR agencies that created the buzz that fed the machine with finely distilled key messages.
  
  
• This book will name company names, key company executives, places and events (the good, the bad and the ugly, with an emphasis on the bad and ugly) as they took place and substantiated by e-mails, memos, my personal notes, interviews with colleagues and in one case the lies of one CEO reconstructed through various media reports.
  
  
• This book will also explore the toll the new economy took on my personal life including going back to school, bouts with depression and how I turned down a major job offer with a 90% pay increase in Silicon Valley in order to keep my family and marriage in tact.