Dear Reader:

We have decided to honor requests that we received -- in the responses to a recent reader survey -- to write about upcoming conferences that we believe are worthy of mention.  Since writing about upcoming events is a departure for us and because it smacks of advertising these events -- we take this opportunity to make clear to our readers our policies on promoting industry conferences organized by firms other than our own and how they differ from our policy on the content of news reports about those same conferences.

FIRST, WE SCREEN THE LIST: The Smart Grid Today events page at our website lists only industry conferences that we believe are likely to offer value to attendees based on our impression of discussion topics, the identities of the panelists listed on a conference’s agenda and quite often based on our experience covering previous instances of the event. 

WE DO NOT GET PAID: The publishers and owner of Smart Grid Today never receive any monetary advertising or other promotional revenue for listing conferences online, writing about them in our publication or sending out promotional email messages about them. 

WE DO LIMITED BARTER DEALS: We make promotional barter deals and here is how that works:

• We receive the promotion of our publication or other products at selected conferences -- including our logo printed on agendas, brochures and other conference handouts, a place for flyers or sample issues at the event and often a promotional email message about our newsletter or other products sent to the attendees after the event;

• In exchange for sending messages by email to our prospect and reader lists, with an opt-out option. 

THE NEWS IS SACRED: The publication of a news story -- and the contents of such a story about any upcoming or past conference -- is never included in any of these barter deals.  We are deeply committed to delivering to our readers completely honest and clear news reporting at all times and thus we treat the news story as off-limits for any promotional deals.  If we write something positive, negative or indifferent about a conference, it is because that is our editorial impression of the event.  We will never publicize an event we do not believe offers value to our readers -- and we will also never alter our reporting of an event because we have a barter deal with its organizers.  We are unconcerned by the risk of losing conference partners as we work to always earn the trust of our only real business partners -- our paying newsletter subscribers.

If this policy is unclear in any way or you would like further details, please feel free to contact me,

Cordially,

Sam Spencer

Publisher, CEO

MMI Inc.

sam@mminews.com