<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">I'm not a lawyer, but I'll go ahead and throw in my possibly scattered thoughts here.<div><br></div><div>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... ;)</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>I'm biased, of course, but also very grateful for the effort Objectstream is making.</div><div><br><div><div>On Sep 18, 2009, at 11:13 AM, Forrest Humphrey wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite">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.<div> <br></div><div>If the 1/qtr speaker is supposed to be a perk that comes along with the sponsorship, then we may have a problem.</div><div><br></div><div>Regards,</div><div>Forrest<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 11:07 AM, Brett L. Schuchert <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:schuchert@yahoo.com">schuchert@yahoo.com</a>></span> wrote:<br> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div style="word-wrap:break-word">Having additional people attend the steering committee and more people offering to speak is /great/ and I fully support that. <div> <br></div><div>It seems very different from:<div class="im"><blockquote type="cite"><div><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204, 204, 204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"> <div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div><div><div><div><div><blockquote type="cite"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204, 204, 204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"> <div><div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204, 204, 204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">He'd also like to provide one speaker per quarter next year</blockquote> </div></div></blockquote></div></blockquote></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>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).</div> <div><br></div><div>I hope that is the case.</div><div><br></div><div><font color="#888888">Brett</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br><div><div>On Sep 18, 2009, at 10:58 AM 9/18/09, Ryan Hoegg wrote:</div><br><blockquote type="cite"> 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.<div><br></div><div>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?</div> <div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>I'd like to hear the rest of your thoughts too.</div> <div><br></div><div>--</div><div>Ryan Hoegg<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 10:43 AM, Brett L. Schuchert <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:schuchert@yahoo.com" target="_blank">schuchert@yahoo.com</a>></span> wrote:<br> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div><div>(Biju, don't mean to refer to you in 3rd person, but I'm addressing the steering committee, not you.)</div> <div><br></div></div>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.<div> <br></div><div>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.</div> <div><br></div><div>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.</div> <div><br></div><div>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.)</div> <div><br></div><div>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.</div> <div><br></div><div>I am in fact more entrenched in my opinion now that I was when I originally responded.</div><div><br></div><div>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?</div> <div><br></div><div>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.)</div><div><br></div><font color="#888888"><div> Brett</div></font><div><div></div><div><div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div><div>On Sep 18, 2009, at 10:17 AM 9/18/09, Ryan Hoegg wrote:</div><br><blockquote type="cite">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.<br> <br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 10:01 PM, Mitch Blevins <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mitchblevins@gmail.com" target="_blank">mitchblevins@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204, 204, 204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"> What kind of topics would the ObjectStream-provided speakers cover? Can examples be provided?<br><font color="#888888"> <br> <br> -Mitch</font><div><div></div><div><br> <br> On Sep 17, 2009, at 6:43 PM, "Brett L. Schuchert" <<a href="mailto:schuchert@yahoo.com" target="_blank">schuchert@yahoo.com</a>> wrote:<br> <br> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204, 204, 204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"> One speaker quarter? That makes my spider senses tingle.<br> <br> He's taking both adversing time (fine) and presenter time. I don't like that unless we allow for multiple speakers per month.<br> <br> Free tutorials:<br> <a href="http://schuchert.wikispaces.com/" target="_blank">http://schuchert.wikispaces.com</a><br> <br> On Sep 17, 2009, at 4:57 PM, Ryan Hoegg <<a href="mailto:ryan.hoegg@gmail.com" target="_blank">ryan.hoegg@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br> <br> Hi Biju, hello steering committee,<br> <br> 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.<br> <br> I invited Biju and his speaker(s) to attend our next steering committee meeting so we could discuss topics.<br> <br> Biju, we really do appreciate your support.<br> <br> --<br> Ryan Hoegg<br> _______________________________________________<br> sc mailing list<br> <a href="mailto:sc@lists.okcjug.org" target="_blank">sc@lists.okcjug.org</a><br> <a href="http://lists.okcjug.org/listinfo.cgi/sc-okcjug.org" target="_blank">http://lists.okcjug.org/listinfo.cgi/sc-okcjug.org</a><br> <a href="http://wiki.okcjug.org/" target="_blank">http://wiki.okcjug.org</a><br> <a href="http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/okcjug/" target="_blank">http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/okcjug/</a><br> <br> _______________________________________________<br> sc mailing list<br> <a href="mailto:sc@lists.okcjug.org" target="_blank">sc@lists.okcjug.org</a><br> <a href="http://lists.okcjug.org/listinfo.cgi/sc-okcjug.org" target="_blank">http://lists.okcjug.org/listinfo.cgi/sc-okcjug.org</a><br> <a href="http://wiki.okcjug.org/" target="_blank">http://wiki.okcjug.org</a><br> <a href="http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/okcjug/" target="_blank">http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/okcjug/</a><br> </blockquote> _______________________________________________<br> sc mailing list<br> <a href="mailto:sc@lists.okcjug.org" target="_blank">sc@lists.okcjug.org</a><br> <a href="http://lists.okcjug.org/listinfo.cgi/sc-okcjug.org" target="_blank">http://lists.okcjug.org/listinfo.cgi/sc-okcjug.org</a><br> <a href="http://wiki.okcjug.org/" target="_blank">http://wiki.okcjug.org</a><br> <a href="http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/okcjug/" target="_blank">http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/okcjug/</a><br> </div></div></blockquote></div><br> _______________________________________________<br>sc mailing list<br><a href="mailto:sc@lists.okcjug.org" target="_blank">sc@lists.okcjug.org</a><br><a href="http://lists.okcjug.org/listinfo.cgi/sc-okcjug.org" target="_blank">http://lists.okcjug.org/listinfo.cgi/sc-okcjug.org</a><br> <a href="http://wiki.okcjug.org/" target="_blank">http://wiki.okcjug.org</a><br><a href="http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/okcjug/" target="_blank">http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/okcjug/</a><br></blockquote></div><br> </div></div></div></div></div><br>_______________________________________________<br> sc mailing list<br> <a href="mailto:sc@lists.okcjug.org" target="_blank">sc@lists.okcjug.org</a><br> <a href="http://lists.okcjug.org/listinfo.cgi/sc-okcjug.org" target="_blank">http://lists.okcjug.org/listinfo.cgi/sc-okcjug.org</a><br> <a href="http://wiki.okcjug.org/" target="_blank">http://wiki.okcjug.org</a><br> <a href="http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/okcjug/" target="_blank">http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/okcjug/</a><br> <br></blockquote></div><br></div> _______________________________________________<br>sc mailing list<br><a href="mailto:sc@lists.okcjug.org" target="_blank">sc@lists.okcjug.org</a><br><a href="http://lists.okcjug.org/listinfo.cgi/sc-okcjug.org" target="_blank">http://lists.okcjug.org/listinfo.cgi/sc-okcjug.org</a><br> <a href="http://wiki.okcjug.org" target="_blank">http://wiki.okcjug.org</a><br><a href="http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/okcjug/" target="_blank">http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/okcjug/</a><br></blockquote></div><br> </div></div></div></div></div><br>_______________________________________________<br> sc mailing list<br> <a href="mailto:sc@lists.okcjug.org">sc@lists.okcjug.org</a><br> <a href="http://lists.okcjug.org/listinfo.cgi/sc-okcjug.org" target="_blank">http://lists.okcjug.org/listinfo.cgi/sc-okcjug.org</a><br> <a href="http://wiki.okcjug.org" target="_blank">http://wiki.okcjug.org</a><br> <a href="http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/okcjug/" target="_blank">http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/okcjug/</a><br> <br></blockquote></div><br></div> _______________________________________________<br>sc mailing list<br><a href="mailto:sc@lists.okcjug.org">sc@lists.okcjug.org</a><br>http://lists.okcjug.org/listinfo.cgi/sc-okcjug.org<br>http://wiki.okcjug.org<br>http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/okcjug/<br></blockquote></div><br><div apple-content-edited="true"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; "><div>Jason Lee, SCJP</div><div>President, Oklahoma City Java Users Group</div><div>Senior Java Developer, Sun Microsystems</div><div><a href="http://blogs.steeplesoft.com">http://blogs.steeplesoft.com</a></div></span></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></span></div></span> </div><br></div></body></html>