David Siegel just won't go away!

He just keeps creating new websites. Take his old journal for example. Last updated April 30th, 1998, Siegel's amour propre shows no bounds as he describes his youthful indescretions and thoughts of the day. However, given the mutable nature of the Internet, the page reads like a 19th century historical novel, with just as much relevance to today.

Other sites include Verso, Mr. Siegel's (former?) employer and The Nine-Act Structure, Mr. Siegel's foray into the architecture of screenwriting. The author of Creating Killer Sites should read his own book or at least update it. His site is not easy to navigate (there's no site map), and it is steeped in the non-database driven pseudo-designer's method of shoving a multitude of images and colors in your face with the mistaken belief that overstimulation makes for good web design. The companion website to Creating Killer Sites lists Adobe Photoshop 4.0.1 (version 6 has been out since August, 2000), and Illustrator 7.0 (version 9 has been out since June, 2000) as image creation software. The links point to files no longer on Adobe's website.

Siegel wrote another book, Futurize Your Enterprise: Business Strategy in the Age of the E-customer (1999) in which he posits his new career as web consultant to big business. His message to them is to make the customer central to your business, an idea that has been a part of TQM since the '50s, and has been pushed by management theory luminary Peter Drucker for decades. Mr. Siegel attributes this groundbreaking new trend to startups.

Websites do require a nice design, but more important is how often they are updated. Websites differ from books in that they can be constantly changed. The Internet looks like it is heading towards more database-driven pages displaying current information and products. The layout of Yahoo Finance! and Amazon.com are some examples. The question now is where is David Siegel? His Futurizebooks website, the companion website to Futurize Your Business invites viewers to "Join us at FuturizeWest, April 19-22!" But scrolling down it becomes apparent that this event was scheduled for last year.

David Siegel is leaving bread crumbs in his outdated websites that litter the net. If he is intent on delighting his customers, how does he expect them to find him?

Reference for the history of TQM: Attractive quality: its importance and the points of remark, YOSHIO KONDO, Total Quality Management, July 2000 pS647.

David Siegel's latest virtual manifestation is at Siegel Vision.