I'll say they're spammy. This is the same form letter that gets posted to many tech-leaning meetups. It's started some pretty long, snarky threads on the mailing lists to the point where I had to unsub from one.

Oh, if you're worried that you missed the April 8th deadline, don't worry: the last email I got from them was on the 11th.

This ought to be a case study on how to make a not-terrible concept into a really unsavory mess.