Got this in my inbox:

Dear Matthew:

It’s a fact that 90% of life success is not what you know, but who you know.

/Want to build a network with 300 top student leaders from across Canada? /

/Want to meet recruiters from high-profile companies to secure your future career? /

/This is your opportunity to build a network you can only dream about! /

The Impact Leadership Conference is Canada’s premiere student entrepreneurship and business conference and takes place in Toronto on Nov. 17-19, 2006. The 3-day conference features keynote speaker Kendra Todd, past winner on Donald Trump’s “The Apprentice” and an industry banquet, case study competition, recruiting exhibition, think tank and several speaker sessions.

Due to generous corporate support, the delegate fee is now only $129 if you register and pay by Saturday, November 11th.

Register today at www.impact.org/conference

Special thanks to our Partner sponsors: Deloitte, Fasken Martineau, Infusion Development, IBM, MasterCard, TELUS, Tata Consultancy Services and the >University of Waterloo.

– Brandi Gillett Woods B.A., M.A., CSEC, CSEM Alumni & Communications Officer Faculty of Arts, University of Waterloo 519.888.4567 ext 37705 www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/alumni

This email frustrates me on a few levels.

More after the jump.

Firstly, he should have a citation for that first line, “It’s a fact that 90% of life success is not what you know, but who you know.” - if it’s a fact, with an exact percent and everything, he should be able to tell me where he got that number from. “Success” can be defined so many ways, so I’m surprised that achieving my lifelong dream of drinking 100 cups of coffee in one day depends (Exactly 90%) upon knowing the right people.

What’s with the /’s around the following three statements? I’ve seen in some webcomics them use << and >> to indicate a section of text is said in a different language, and translated for our benefit (IE, two people are having a conversation in French, we’ll see << and >> to indicate this, even though the writing’s in English). Is the / the indicator for speaking marketing bullshit? If it is, it’s good to know.

The third statement reads funny - “/This is your opportunity to build a network you can only dream about!/”. The tenses sound strange, I think it would sound better with something like, “This will be an opportunity for you to build a network you can only dream about” or “This is your opportunity to build a network you could only dream about”. Someone should get someone else to read this stuff over for them… They’re making a bad impression in front of the 300 recruiters!

So many questions for this here: “The 3-day conference features keynote speaker Kendra Todd, past winner on Donald Trump’s “The Apprentice”…” Come on, do I really want to hear from ANYONE who was in “The Apprentice”? What could they possibly say? “I was smart during a 3 month long competition so someone handed me a great job as a prize”? Let’s face it, if you were ON “The Apprentice” in the first place, you were either doing something you didn’t mind abandoning for a few months, or you were so hopelessly bored with the position you’d really earned that it was better to take a 1-in-16 shot at getting a better one.

And the second half of that sentence, “… and an industry banquet, case study competition, recruiting exhibition, think tank and several speaker sessions.” Let’s take ‘em one at a time. “an industry banquet” - What does that even mean?? What “industry”? Who’s there at that banquet? Will you have real quality time sitting next to some self-made millionaire or will you be sitting next to some underpaid recruiter who knows less about their company’s inner workings than the janitors? “Case Study Competition” - Sooooo… You, the person there to learn from the greats, will be required to work in groups with, I assume, other students? I can work with other students at home for free. “… think tank and several speaker sessions”. Yeah, this is the time when Microsoft and IBM will discover the next big thing in computing, all thanks to this think tank. Bullshit man, great thinking doesn’t happen at conferences for students.

“Due to generous corporate support, the delegate fee is now only $129 if you register and pay by Saturday, November 11th.” - I received this email November 10th. Did the industry sponsors call you up at 5 AM and say, “Hey, we’ll kick in, but only for the next 48 hours. Go!”. Business people aren’t magical fairies;the carriage NEVER turns back into a pumpkin at midnight. If there’s not enough organization to give me more than 24 hours to decide whether i want to go to Toronto for three days, I don’t think the best-of-the-best are running this.

Also, isn’t it just common sense to tell me what this thing will cost AFTER November 11th? That’d work in two ways - I can know for November 12th, in case I decide to do it later, and it’ll encourage me to decide quickly and get signed up since I wouldn’t want to pay $50 more in two days.

I don’t even know who’s writing this email: “Special thanks to our Partner sponsors: Deloitte, Fasken Martineau, Infusion Development, IBM, MasterCard, TELUS, Tata Consultancy Services and the University of Waterloo.” This conference is run by Impact, right? So, that means that someone from the University of Waterloo is writing this, to inform students about this great conference - but then why is it “OUR” sponsors? Dude from Waterloo doesn’t work for Impact too, does he? If he does, that’s a whole other can of worms - why should Impact be able to spam all of us for a for-profit conference by virtue of having a Waterloo employee in their pocket?

Also, why isn’t there any information specific to Waterloo? Why don’t they offer us anything institution-specific? Someone’s decided to send this thing to every Arts student at the University. Arts is the biggest faculty, how about renting a charter bus to run us up? Or a group rate on a hotel in TO? Conferences can often get special rates from places to stay, Waterloo should be able to pull of the same trick for its students participating.

Bottom line, this reads like a form letter sent out without having anyone really read it over to see if it’s reasonable. If it’s sent out for the good of the students, it should’ve been sent out a week ago to give us decent time on the reduced rate. It should also include all the relavent information someone who wants to go would need (it’s email, page space is free!)

Ugh, I get enough spam without UW sending me crap, or even good information written to sound like crap.

EDIT: Checked the Impact website. Guess what little nugget I found:

Due to generous corporate support, this $700/student event now has a delegate fee of only $129 if you apply and pay by Friday, November 10th.

I literally received this email on November 10th at 10:30 PM - That gives me a generous hour and a half to decide if I want to go to Toronto for three days (AND the date’s just plain wrong in the email UW sent me)