[Steering Committee] Annual JUG sponsorship

Fri Sep 18 09:13:21 PDT 2009

I think you're spot on Brett. If the "providing a speaker" is through the
normal course of how speakers volunteer today, then Biju is managing the
process of asking his people to volunteer and all is well. That's just good
business and makes his company look great for having employees that are
active in the JUG.
If the 1/qtr speaker is supposed to be a perk that comes along with the
sponsorship, then we may have a problem.

Regards,
Forrest

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 11:07 AM, Brett L. Schuchert <schuchert at yahoo.com>wrote:

> 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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