corporaterockstars.com

corporaterockstars.com - NOT for team building events in Austin, Texas

Hello, and welcome to Corporate Rock Stars (dot com!), a website totally not at all related to team building events in Austin TX, and totally not related to a company called Groove Labs or a guy named Craig Nadel.

What is this site?

Well, it’s not much! Mostly, I own this domain name because I put up a little web forum in 2005 to allow my coworkers to bid on “Corporate Karaoke” to raise money for charity. We were having an event and we volunteered the Director+ staff to sing karaoke - the catch was they’d have to sing whatever song got the highest bid, and the money would go to charity. If someone paid $200 for you to sing a certain famous song by the Divinyls, well, it’s for charity, bub!

Okay, but that’s not here now, so…?

Yeah, so after I ran this little event, a guy named Craig Nadel tracked me down. Turns out he runs corporate team building events in Austin, Texas, and he was offering a team building thing called Corporate Rock Stars as well. My personal email address and phone number were very readily available (it was a simpler time when we doxxed ourselves in the early-ish days of the internet), and yet Craig still decided to go atomic. He looked up where I worked, found the number for the office I worked in (which was not Headquarters, so he had to put in some effort), and managed to leave a threatening voicemail.

He claimed I was hurting his brand, that he owned the trademark and I didn’t have a right to the domain, and he not only threatened legal action, but threatened to get my employer involved and contact my boss. I was a young-ish guy in my 20s just trying to make it in a boring corporate job, but I wasn’t about to be bullied by this guy. I confirmed he registered his trademark AFTER my domain name was registered, and reviewed the ICANN rules on domain ownership disputes. I sent him a thorough “respectfully, go the heck away” email and told him I was keeping the domain.

That’s awfully petty, don’t you think?

I suppose perhaps it is, but in the 20 years now since I first registered the domain, every time it comes up for renewal I just think to myself “that jerk is going to snatch this domain up, and he not only threatened to litigate when he had no right to, but also threatened to mess with my employment. It’s 2026 now, this guy was WAY ahead of cancel culture!

I am generally (I swear!) not at all a petty person. My friends would describe me as kind, generous, and incredibly empathetic. I just really, really have a problem with unnecessary bullying and I will not let it go. People should assume best intent and be kind to each other, and this guy was anything but.

I was looking for team building events, not this ridiculousness!

Well, he’s got the .net domain that I’m not going to link to. I googled around a bit though, and it seems like people like a few other companies!

If you find this level of pettiness amusing enough to support “sticking it to the man”, some folks suggested I share my venmo! Here it is, @honestbleeps. If you prefer to do something positive, you can donate to Cradles to Crayons and help children just like I wanted to when I first made the site back in 2005. It was for a different charity then, but this is a great one in my hometown of Chicago.