[Steering Committee] Annual JUG sponsorship

Fri Sep 18 09:09:40 PDT 2009

I'm not a fan of one speaker per quarter if that is guaranteed. I think it's
a bad precedent.  Just volunteer yourself and your talk and get placed in
the queue with everyone else.

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 10:58 AM, Ryan Hoegg <ryan.hoegg at gmail.com> wrote:

> Biju, Brett, SC, I did not intend to guarantee the speaking slots to
> ObjectStream speakers.  However, it did come up soon after our conversation
> about what would come with a sponsorship.
> In any case, Biju made it clear that he is offering sponsorship to support
> the community first, and if it benefits ObjectStream as well, that's a nice
> perk.  Biju, am I characterizing our meeting correctly?
>
> My suspicion is that Dan Mavis and others will attend a couple Steering
> Committee meetings, and we will have more people offering to speak at our
> meetings.
>
> I'd like to hear the rest of your thoughts too.
>
> --
> Ryan Hoegg
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 10:43 AM, Brett L. Schuchert <schuchert at yahoo.com>wrote:
>
>> (Biju, don't mean to refer to you in 3rd person, but I'm addressing the
>> steering committee, not you.)
>>
>> On more than one occasion I've not talked because someone else wanted to.
>> (As you can probably guess, I enjoy giving talks at the JUG). So now we're
>> making this problem worse. I'd rather forgo all sponsorship (and then we
>> could meet for free) than sell the spots.
>> I don't see how asking for 25% of the speaking time is NOT selling our
>> talks. There is already a specific quid pro quo for the $1200 sponsorship -
>> advertising and branding, now we are making it unbalanced. Furthermore, if
>> we sell this, then are we legally obligated to report the value of this to
>> the IRS and the OkC tax commission? I don't remember if he is able to write
>> off donations to our group, but if so then he should not be able to write
>> off the full $1200 because of the intrinsic value of his employees talking
>> to 25 - 40 people in the OkC technical community. That is marketing and it
>> has some monetary value. I'd say that the value is far more than $1200. If
>> it leads to one sale, it is /far/ more than $1200.
>>
>> Since I'm not an elected officer, I understand I really don't have any
>> kind of say, but if the decision were mine, I'd refuse the money and go for
>> no sponsorship. If we apply this model, get 4 sponsors, we then have no say
>> over the speakers.
>>
>> His people CAN speak at the meetings. In fact I encourage that. They
>> simply need to volunteer - like everybody else. But there's no guarantee
>> that his people will get to talk /unless/ they volunteer. If we guarantee a
>> spot, then there is no incentive for his employees to really work at doing a
>> good job or picking an interesting topic. (How many of my [bad] ideas have
>> we avoided over the years - I'd say well over 90% because I'm a flaming
>> extravert and I say a lot of s&*t.)
>>
>> If, on the other hand, we guarantee spots, then we have to take what we
>> are given. We have given up right of refusal. So if he (or anybody - I don't
>> see Biju doing this) wanted to make a product sales pitch, we could not
>> really refuse.
>>
>> I am in fact more entrenched in my opinion now that I was when I
>> originally responded.
>>
>> AND FWIW, I believe Biju is a savvy businessman. I don't think he as ill
>> intentions. I'm sure he knows the value of having his people talk. As for
>> whether he was intending to buy the rights or not, it does not matter. That
>> is what is happening. If push comes to shove, we'd have /no/ way of saying
>> otherwise from an ethical or legal standpoint. As soon as that happens, how
>> can we refuse other sponsorship without showing favoritism?
>>
>> Finally, even selling one slot is inappropriate. We have that. The sponsor
>> has a brief introduction. That precedence is set (and I have no problem with
>> that.)
>>
>> Brett
>>
>>
>> On Sep 18, 2009, at 10:17 AM 9/18/09, Ryan Hoegg wrote:
>>
>> Well I don't think Biju was asking to "buy" the right to provide those
>> speakers, just that he'd like his people to speak at the meetings.  Dan
>> Mavis (who stood in for me last month) works for ObjectStream.  We can talk
>> about that at the steering committee meeting though.
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 10:01 PM, Mitch Blevins <mitchblevins at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> What kind of topics would the ObjectStream-provided speakers cover?  Can
>>> examples be provided?
>>>
>>>
>>> -Mitch
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sep 17, 2009, at 6:43 PM, "Brett L. Schuchert" <schuchert at yahoo.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>  One speaker quarter? That makes my spider senses tingle.
>>>>
>>>> He's taking both adversing time (fine) and presenter time. I don't like
>>>> that unless we allow for multiple speakers per month.
>>>>
>>>> Free tutorials:
>>>>   http://schuchert.wikispaces.com
>>>>
>>>> On Sep 17, 2009, at 4:57 PM, Ryan Hoegg <ryan.hoegg at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi Biju, hello steering committee,
>>>>
>>>> I had lunch with Biju today to go over what an annual sponsorship would
>>>> look like.  We agreed that he would pay $1200 on January 1 for a 2010
>>>> sponsorship.  He wasn't as interested in direct sponsorship benefits as our
>>>> recruiting sponsors have been, but he would like ObjectStream branding on
>>>> the web site and the standard three meeting sponsorships we included with
>>>> the recruiting sponsorship.  He'd also like to provide one speaker per
>>>> quarter next year.
>>>>
>>>> I invited Biju and his speaker(s) to attend our next steering committee
>>>> meeting so we could discuss topics.
>>>>
>>>> Biju, we really do appreciate your support.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Ryan Hoegg
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>>
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>
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