[Steering Committee] The Other Email

Mon May 26 09:06:02 PDT 2008

quick note on this:

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.

 Opening up the wall between the rooms was Bill Powers (UoP) idea...

brian

On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 11:44 AM, Jason Lee <jason at steeplesoft.com> wrote:

> 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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>
>
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