[kwlug disc.] Corporate/proprietary presentations

[unsolicited]

Well said. But I would note a couple of things:

We seem to be perpetually hurting for presenters. If a vendor is 
offering, don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

A couple of messages have implied that vendors are approaching the 
LUG, to present. I suspect that is not the case - more likely, LUG 
members are approaching the vendors. (And thank you all for making 
those approaches, to provide content to the LUG meetings.) So the idea 
of acquiring 'pre-approval' to accept a vendor's offer to come in and 
present seems a little self-defeating. In that, presumably, vendor's 
have their own time lines while LUG time lines are measured in months 
due to the frequency of the meetings. See gift horse, above.

Having said that, Richard handled vmware nicely - at one meeting he 
asked if we were interested, and a couple (?) of months later it 
happened. [Thank you Richard.]

Given the monthly time frames involved, I would suggest a simple 
message to the list of "Are we interested?" would be sufficient. And 
anything short of "REALLY BAD IDEA" would be an automatic go. As Adam, 
says, we vote with our feet. Despite the inherent data skewing (aka 
Zeke's).

	Let's just remember - there is a built in buffer to actually seeing 
the presentation: Before anything can be nailed down in terms of 
dates, Richard has to be approached to acquire a time slot, usually 
involving the juggling of already scheduled presentations and/or 
presentations already in the hopper. Not that that's ever been a 
problem, just that some co-ordination has to happen, over a period of, 
at least, a few days.

Adam Glauser wrote, On 04/09/2008 1:02 PM:
> Paul Nijjar wrote:
>> How do we feel about commercial product and/or non-FLOSS
>> presentations? Did we like them? Did we feel they were appropriate and
>> effective for the group? 
> 
> I tend to agree with the other posters in that I don't think we need an 
> outright ban on these presentations.  I've found some to be interesting.
> 
> I like Chris' idea of limiting the number of this type of presentation, 
> since I personally find much more of interest in the regular 
> presentations.  I'm not sure a specific number per year is necessary at 
> this point.
> 
> I don't really like the idea of voting on whether a particular vendor's 
> presentation is of interest.  How do we know what is an 'acceptable' 
> number of interested people?  What about people who have to miss that 
> meeting?  I would suggest that we allow presentations on a first come, 
> first served basis, and people can vote with their feet.
> 
> As long as the fact that it is a vendor presentation should be very 
> clear in the announcement, and the vendor can come up with some 
> reasonable connection to Linux or FLOSS in general, then people can make 
> a decision about whether or not they want to take part.
> 
> As for what constitutes a 'reasonable connection', I'm happy to leave it 
> up to whomever is approached by the vendor.  If they are unsure, then 
> perhaps a post to the discussion list is the way to decide?