[Steering Committee] Annual JUG sponsorship

Fri Sep 18 08:43:25 PDT 2009

(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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