[Steering Committee] Annual JUG sponsorship

Brett L. Schuchert schuchert at yahoo.com
Fri Sep 18 09:07:49 PDT 2009 

Having additional people attend the steering committee and more people  
offering to speak is /great/ and I fully support that.

It seems very different from:
>
>> He'd also like to provide one speaker per quarter next year

I understand that is possibly /my/ misinterpretation of second hand  
information because you are reporting on his meaning (thus it is  
second-hand and suspect).

I hope that is the case.

Brett
On Sep 18, 2009, at 10:58 AM 9/18/09, Ryan Hoegg 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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