90p Admin

https://90minds-com.socialcast.com/messages/19527940?ref=stream I don't recall receiving any money from xTuple in exchange for Brian's training session. If we aren't getting any monetary benefit from them, how are we going to monetize future vendor events?

Phil was giving a pitch for xTuple - and this was part of the discussion.

No, Phil was supposed to be talking about picking up another product, not giving a pitch. I know he had flyers but I didn't read one.

So why wasn't xTuple charged a sponsor fee? The only difference is that a member was the shill? My take on the session was that Phil was discussing his experiences in working with another vendor in a generic sense. Now they are advertising their opportunity to ALL the members free of charge. And they even have Brian pitching the product now. IMHO, needs to be nipped.

It was a discussion about xTuple. I hoped it would be a broad discussion about the pros and cons of SAP, Navision, Dynamics, Epicor. We had people in the room who could have added a lot but it became really a pros and cons of xTuple. Realistically my takeaway is that xTuple is probably a good program for someone was was active with an SBT type system where they also modified it and pursued those customers who were really into customizing their programs in rather unique ways. Realistically I think it's way too soon for many people to book flights to Vegas. Probably ok to just be sure any future mentions or promotions work their way through a sponsorship opportunity.

I think Brian's post should be taken out. Otherwise. all the other vendor members will start the shameless plugs.

It was one thing for Phil to specifically do an xTuple session but it's another thing for Brian to promote that it is at his office. I'm just uncomfortable with the specificity of it. It's a grand opportunity for xTuple to market to 90 Minds for nary a penny.

I kind of agree. I tried to keep my presentation as non 'salesy' as possible and only when the audience dragged me into it via questions, did I get into real specifics about my solution as I definitely didn't want to get tagged as being promoting a product. in all fairness, I don't think Phil was trying to 'sell' xTuple. It would be interesting to know if he is getting any financial benefit by other 90minds members signing up. if so that should have been declared before he took on the session. If not, I think he's just trying to be an evangelist, similar to how Wayne is about Macs :) and he's just being over zealous in his promotion of it. If we ever do a similar topic in the future, it should be a number of us (I volunteered for this, and was very participatory from the audience) as a 'panel' similar to how we ran the marketing session.

I have to admit, you did a good job Mark. Thank you for that.

Since this is spillover from the session what I think we should do is advise them that beyond this followup if xTuple wants any involvement they'd have to do so as a sponsor and we would not allow for re-posting of training or recruitment. What was shared here was not anything more than what was discussed in the class.

Actually, Mark, you did a heckuva job staying on the backup topic but taking the time to answer questions that were asked. Looking forward to your encore presentation next year - ""Backup beyond the cloud - feels like heaven"".

The material on the flyer was openly presented in Phil's session.

Do we actually want a Sage competitor as an open sponsor, @WayneSchulz ?

While not trying to bust Chinsky's balls, but the offer to add folks to his email newsletter falls under the same category as the xTuple flyer getting posted. I think both fly under the radar as things mentioned at MotM, weren't sponsors, but were discussed openly and had some degree of interest from the attendees.

And then there's the 90 Minds G+ post...

Regarding an open competitor to Sage. Many of the sponsers were selling solutions that aren't 'Sage endorsed'. So what? The beauty of this group is that it isn't funded by Sage, and Sage does nothing for us and is specifically excluded from participating. Thus we don't owe them anything. In many ways Sage is now our competitor by forcing clients to buy their support, pushing their 'endorsed' solutions, and selling more and more products directly and only allowing us access to things via paid certifications. IMHO if somebody wants to pay (and that's not the xTuple case) and it fits within our time & promotional content rules, then bring all comers

I don't see much conclusion to this other than: 1. Share the info as followup to any presentation - that's pretty much over so we shouldn't see more of it. We're not opening an ongoing discussion to keep promoting the concepts unless the people are sponsors. 2. If you want to promote on an on-going basis then that company should contact Peter about sponsorship opportunities. And sponsorship opportunities doesn't mean a company (say xTuple) not already in the group is going to be added to Socialcast main groups and have free reign to join every conversation and eavesdrop. So what would a sponsor get? Some possibilities - webinar, calendar listing, newsletter mention, literature distribution, possibly access to a separate private Socialcast group (or maybe it's linkedin or G+ or somewhere else) specifically for questions about their product or service. I think we need to keep the ""magic"" of Socialcast separate from sponsorship. Do we want non-Sage publishers as sponsors? Certainly not in the Socialcast group because Socialcast is primarily our technical idea exchange and I don't want sponsors to be added so they can browse through past discussions.

Good points @MarkChinsky.

I agree with @MarkChinsky philosophy on Sage competitors. Clearly our task is to carve out the well defined areas where such a sponsor would have an opportunity to market to the group.

I posted this as a comment to Brian's post. I think it's premature to start removing posts before people have been educated. It would be a different conversation if a member out of the blue posted a recruitment poster for Accumatica or Netsuite since neither of those were topics of MOTM. We have to re-educate the members on the expectations. Remember that they have largely not been a part of these sponsorship conversations. They also need to be made aware of the great cost savings that sponsors enable us to pass along. Without the sponsorship of the MOTM I'm quite sure we would have had to charge $700-$800 or feed everyone on Russ Graff's lunch expense account. Here's my post that I just made to Brian's xTuple: There has been some discussion about the ability of third parties - such as xTuple or anyone who wants to reach the 90 Minds membership - to market to the group. In this case xTuple is IMO a followup to the content of a session at MOTM. A single posting is fine (just as others have posted their slide decks). They should not however expect to advertise followup sessions or opportunities without talking with the group about sponsorship. In the future similar opportunities will be by paid sponsorships - such as what was offered at the MOTM (and GREATLY reduced everyone's cost for such an event). Without sponsorship MOTM might have cost upwards of $700 - $800 per person. Peter Wolf - pwolf@azamba.com - manages our sponsorships and he is the person to contact should there be a third party product to advertise to, promote a webinar, an event or participate in a 90 Minds event. The administrative team is in the process of working on sponsorship opportunities - and the ability for vendors/sponsors to interact with the group. I hope to have that information shortly. I do not think you're going to see vendors in our main Socialcast groups as those are primarily support oriented. It's more likely that the sponsor opportunities will be webinar or advertising (think website) related. In the meantime -- if anyone through their contacts has events or third party products which are looking to be marketed to 90 Minds please contact Peter Wolf and he can provide a list of opportunities. This is a change from how we've run things in the past and it will take some time for us to fine tune the process. Thanks for everyone's patience and understanding.

@WayneSchulz - Well said.

I think we nipped in the bud

I only want to add that I heard from more than one person that they thought Phil's session would be broader than it was. People felt like it was Phil enthusing about xTuple vs discussing the pros and cons of picking up another package in a general sense. I think it was a bit of a lost opportunity for the attendees to hear more about expanding their practices. I remember when Scott and Rob got up to talk about Intacct, they gave a more rounded story from a partner perspective. (Maybe my memories are fuzzy but that's how I recall it.)

For the next event I think we will benefit from picking a couple key sessions and urging people to participate. Jim did this with alternatives to FRX and I think that was a great session because it was well rounded. Make those sessions be the theme. ITA does this and it mostly works well. Alternatives to Sage is a very hot topic and collectively something we should focus on. It may be hot enough that we schedule some informal webinars for members only. Gary and Mark have a wealth of information to share and although I think Gary benefits from being a master SAP VAR he has always been great about sharing pros and cons as has Mark and others.

Next year if we have this session we need to run it as a discussion panel.

I don't understand why people didn't ask either Phil or others in the session broader questions. Was it a one-sided discussion? Phil had asked if it was going to be a panel discussion and I told him not formally but that there would be others in the audience with experience and he should feel free to call on them. I probably would have tried to bring others into the discussion if I had attended.

I can't speak for everyone but I bailed out after 15 - 20 minutes when I saw where it was going (ie; xTuple praise session). I think at one point people were contesting features of different products and what products had what features. But ... I didn't think it was billed as a product shoot out. Nothing wrong with a product shoot out. I was just more interested on hearing how other channels operate - resources, margins, support, leads, etc. - rather than how cool product x is.

Both Gary and Mark participated and had some feedback. There seemed to be some xTuple interest from the audience and there were questions on xTuple. I mistakenly figured that Phil would open the discussion from people in the audience. I think this might be important enough to be a general session next time. Even the most task oriented of consultants certainly get these types of ""what else is out there"" questions from time to time. I'm admittedly jaded to presentations that try to sell me that a certain software company is just like how Sage used to be and you get more attention. Because that's all true. Until it isn't any longer. We need to get the proper balance between a business only type session (which probably loses our purest consultants) and a very helpful ""good to know and ask xxxx if you want more info"" type session.

As somebody said previously, next time this should be a panel. Should be at least 3 or 4 members. Then a moderator would ask a question (or the audience) such as, ""tell me about the margin structure"", or ""what's the competition like from other VAR's and/or direct?