While looking for this Fast Company article, I ran across someone named ‘Miro Slodki’ asking for a link to this very article. Since I had the link handy, I pasted it into the ‘Comment’ field and hit ‘Submit’, and was sent to FC’s “Here, create an account and tell us lots about yourself, agree to our ToS, etc.”

I just wanted answer Miro’s question. So I googled ‘Miro Slodki’ and found his blog. “A-ha!” I thought. “I’ll just zip over and email him directly, and in less time than it would take to fill out FC’s ‘new user’ form. Take that, Fast Company!”

Only…I couldn’t find an email link. Now stubbornly in pursuit of my prey, I spent 5 minutes wandering around the site, even visiting his LinkedIn profile, only to by stymied. Nowhere on the site (that I could find) was there any way to just contact Miro directly (even via a web form), other than posting comments on actual posts.

I even found that Miro is looking for interesting work:

PS. At the moment I find myself seeking new challenges and contracting assignments. I would appreciate if you could extend a kind word on my behalf and send the referrals my way.

But how could I do that if I can’t find how to contact him?

I searched for a while, but Google and I couldn’t find him. I found other places that Miro had joined and commented, all of which jealously guarded any way to contact him directly. So eventually I gave up. We’ll see if, in an amusing irony, the linkback to his blog that Wordpress will auto-generate will draw him here to see the link he’d asked for a week or so ago.

Hey, I’m not picking on Miro, by any means. I don’t even know him (though I know him better than I did 20 minutes ago, that’s for sure). I’m just pointing out what I think are two serious problems companies and people share when trying to use the web to achieve their goals:

• Trying to enforce behavior on people that I have no relationship with, and to whom I offer no benefit. I wasn’t trying to get something from Fast Company; I was trying to help out one of their readers, on their site, by linking to one of their articles.
• Seeking visibility and opportunity without giving it a way to knock. I know spam is a problem, but being permanently incommunicado is worse. You don’t have to go as far as Scoble. But if you want contact, you have to throw me a bone.