[Steering Committee] The Other Email

[Jason Lee]

OK.  There are probably going to be lots of unrelated issues in this one.
We'll just have to see what all makes it in by the time I call it good. :)

*Door Prizes and Attendance Numbers*
We have a LOT of stuff to give away.  I still have a healthy bunch of stuff
from Sun (T-Shirts, CDs, etc) to give away, and I also got some RefCardz
from DZone to give away.  All of this is (and maybe more) is in addition to
what our other, regular sponsors graciously donate each month.

One problem we have each month is that we may have 28 sign up, and 41
actually attend.  This has caused, on occasion, problems with the quantity
of food the sponsors provided (again, HUGE thanks to the sponsors that may
be listening in ;).  We've talked about making food require registration,
which I still think is a pretty good idea.  I'd like to go one step further
and tie the door prize to online registration as well.  Perhaps we'd do
something where the user needs to register online and print off the
confirmation email and bring that to the meeting.  We could then trade the
email for the normal ticket, which gets him/her food and an entry into the
door prize drawing.  Any thoughts on that?

*Meeting size*
While I wasn't there for the May meeting (Disneyland was much more fun.
Sorry :), I've heard that we set another record attendance and had to push
away the partition at the back of the room.  While that worked for this
meeting, I'm not sure UoP will appreciate that if they hear about it, and
there might actually be someone in the room next time.  Given the tremendous
growth we've seen, it may time to reevaluate our meeting place.  Of course,
any change there could negatively affect our size, making the move, in the
short term, pointless, but that's how things go.  It could, though, actually
drive more growth.  This may be more information than you care to know, but
it's all the experience in this area I have to draw on, so you get to read
it here. :)  The "experts" in chruch growth will tell you (if you're
inclined to ask) that once you hit about 80% capacity in a meeting space,
people tend not to come as they start to feel overcrowded.  We may be facing
the same issue here.  If I weren't required to be there, I might be
dissuaded from coming back if I had to stand up crammed in a corner.

With that long-winded paragraph out of my system, the question is this:
What do we do about our capacity issues?  I get the impression that we're
already in the biggest room UoP has to offer.  It's possible, though, that
we might be able to rent those two room (and, thus, I assume double our
monthly cost in that area).  Doing so would depend, of course, on UoP's
willingness to let us do that.  Failing that, what are our options?  Francis
Tuttle has been very gracious in offering us free meeting space, but we run
into location issues (Reno is far from Edmond, and Rockwell is too far
removed from just about everything) as well as the logistics issue that
drove us from there several months ago (though that might have changed in
the interim or we might be able to get some assistance to remedy the
situation otherwise).  What are other options?  There's always a hotel
conference room somewhere.  I have no idea what the cost or month-to-month
availability would be for something like that, but it's an option.  Any
other ideas?  I'm sure there's something I'm missing.

*Speaker Gifts*
Someone (Hobi?) brought up the idea of gifts for the speakers.  While I *do*
like the idea of cash, especially as I prepare for an August presentation,
that's not really possible, given our current set up (nor, possibly,
desirable).  As I noted above, I do have several of the t-shirts from Sun
(some of which are "Official JUG Member" shirts).  Rather than give those
away, we could reserve them for our speakers.  While the supply is limited,
it will at least get us by, and I might even be able to get some more from
Sun (or $ANOTHER_COMPANY) as the need approaches.  How does that sound?
Having a regular (and exclusive) gift for the speaker might encourage more
people to volunteer to speak. (Hat tip to Hobi for a great suggestion).

*Web Site*
This may not interest most of you, but I'm trying to upgrade our site to
Joomla 1.5, which was released a few weeks ago.  I have a development
version installed on my local box, as some of the APIs have changed, so I
have to update our theme template to match the upgraded version.  While I
was doing that, though, I got to thinking that we could use a good logo.
Check out these, for example:

https://transylvaniajug.dev.java.net/
https://cejug.dev.java.net/
http://www.bejug.org
http://www.jug.cl/download/userResources/logo

Anyone have any good logo ideas?  Better yet, are there any graphics gurus
in our midst that could make a good logo that says both Java AND Oklahoma?
The only thoughts that come to mind are Duke with a tornado or oil rig, or
Duke as a cowboy.  Tornadoes might be a bit "scary" and I'm not realy
comfortable perpetuating the Oklahoma-is-a-hick-state idea with a goat roper
Duke.  I kinda like the oil derek, though.  Hmm... Duke in front of the OKC
sky line might be cool.  Not necessarily recognizable as Oklahoma by
non-natives, but that's OK, I guess.  I might tinker and see what I can come
up with.  Contributions welcome, of course.  I'll probably mention this on
the main list, too.

That's all I can think of for now.  Feedback is not only welcome, but it's
required.  If necessary, I will drive to each of your homes and sing on your
front porch, dancing if I need to.  Don't make me dance.  You won't like me
when I dance... :)

-- 
Jason Lee, SCJP
Software Architect -- Objectstream, Inc.
Mojarra and Mojarra Scales Dev Team
https://mojarra.dev.java.net
https://scales.dev.java.net
http://blogs.steeplesoft.com
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