[Steering Committee] Annual JUG sponsorship

Fri Sep 18 08:58:33 PDT 2009

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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