It all starts with people’s fear of what they can’t understand or control. Most will take the “ignorance route” (e.g. I don’t know how you understand all that computer stuff) But for some, they grasp onto their ego too tightly, and by your demonstration, you’ve undermined their intelligence.

I commend your efforts to defend the community from these types of people. Lol, love the caveman analogy.

I’m part of the way there. I run about 75% of barcamp san diego, I organize information security and hacker meetups in town (hacker bootcamp), as well as a weekly dinner party (www.twitter.com/drinkup).

I’ve been meaning to give away more free time from my consultancy – I hand out free 15 minute audits, but I’ve been thinking of kicking them up to an hour.

I’ve been thinking about your dilemma this afternoon and believe that you may have to go the way of community overachievers and politicos and that is, build up a reputation via giving, volunteering (maybe something to do w/ Haiti) and when one of your potential clients reads about you they will have such an overwhelming positive aspect that it will totally override the petty cuts by your old “friend”.