In the 1990s Virgin and British Airways brought you the 'dirty tricks' scandal; this month Lighting brings you its very own corporate intrigue: Trollgate!
We usually wouldn't bore you with the minutiae of publishing warfare but this particular story is quite amusing. It's come to our attention that we have two new 'connections' on LinkedIn and they really don't like us very much. One is Danny Velinski, a self-employed building services engineer from Poland, who just happens to share his name with the claustrophobic tunneller played by Charles Bronson in The Great Escape. When we posted a recent feature about LED warranties on Philips's Innovation In Light LinkedIn Group, Danny felt moved to post the following comment: "ZZZZZ - This round table discussion seemed to tell us the obvious – people want guarantees and not much colour shift. Next week Turkeys [sic] vote for cancellation of Christmas."
Fair enough, you can't please everyone, we thought, but then we noticed Danny only has one other connection on LinkedIn: another self-employed engineer with a similarly hazy profile called Colin Blythe. Or should that be Colin 'the Forger' Blythe – also from the Great Escape?? Like Danny, Colin also prefers other magazines, and one in particular. When we started a discussion about LEDs and fluorescents on our own Lighting Discussions Group, Colin helpfully provided the group with a link to some external content: "I found this retrofit project example quite useful: http://www.luxmagazine.co.uk/#!/issue/5/page/16," he commented.
Can you see where we're going with this?
If Danny and Colin really do exist, then we value their comments. If, on the other hand, they're the troll identities of a chippy competitor with a POW film fixation, then the question must surely be: haven't they got anything more constructive to do with their time?
