[Steering Committee] Annual JUG sponsorship
Jason Lee
jason at steeplesoft.com
Fri Sep 18 09:28:32 PDT 2009
I'm not a lawyer, but I'll go ahead and throw in my possibly scattered
thoughts here.
Legally speaking, we are a not-for-profit legal entity. As far as I
can tell, there are no real restrictions on what we can do for our
sponsors. I'm a bit hesitant to just run with that as I don't want to
get us in trouble, but I think we'd be fine. Sponsors get a write-
off, not a deduction, as we're not a charity. If we need
clarification, I have the ear of an attorney... ;)
At any rate, having worked with Biju, I have a pretty good
understanding of his view of what the JUG is about (he is, of course,
free to chime in ;). He understands that a healthy community is good
for all involved. The offer of speakers is merely an effort to make
sure he gives back to the community from which he benefits. My
guess is that the one-per-quarter is a goal set more for his people,
as a way to ensure that Objectstream people are fully involved in the
community. As things stand now, an Objectstream employee (or anyone
else, for that matter) can propose a session topic once per quarter
(or more often :| ), and chances are that we'll have a need, so, short
term, it's kind of a moot point.
I will agree, though, that, questions of frequency aside, it's great
to see a sponsor be so involved. Objectstream benefits through
exposure and the experience its people get from the involvement, the
JUG has extra resources from which to pull in terms of speakers (not
to mention funds), and the community gets more speakers and a
stronger, healthier JUG.
I'm biased, of course, but also very grateful for the effort
Objectstream is making.
On Sep 18, 2009, at 11:13 AM, Forrest Humphrey wrote:
> 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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>>
>>
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>
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Jason Lee, SCJP
President, Oklahoma City Java Users Group
Senior Java Developer, Sun Microsystems
http://blogs.steeplesoft.com
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