90p Admin

Regarding the Meeting of the Minds in Feb 2012 ... has anyone considered the pros / cons of opening it up to OASIS members to create more traction? If not, how soon before OASIS folks are eligible to be tapped on the shoulder to join the big leagues of 90 Minds?

The purpose of 90Minds was for smaller resellers to band together and create a organization of resellers (whose territory didn't overlap) to share tips and tricks of the trade that weren't part of the Sage community knowledge base. By doing this, we would be more nimble than the competition. Discussions were open and frank. Without a competitive presence, I share tips that not everyone may know. If we open it up to OASIS, I don't think I would be as forthcoming. IF we open 90Minds to everyone, what is the purpose of having two organizations? Having a level exclusivity works is positive.

I have to agree with Jeff. Maybe once Oasis grows we might have a Oasis meeting but for now I think it should be a 90 Minds member only event.

I agree with @JeffSchwenk - we created OASIS for the purposes of increasing our shared technical knowledge and as an avenue to recruit potential new members to full 90 Mind membership. That recruitment should go through our normal process of proposing people who are not competitive, etc OASIS is there as a tool to bring technical people on without spending weeks arguing about whether the person in question once had bad breath at Sage Summit one year...

Who had bad breathe?????????

So @WayneSchulz how does your comment above correlate to your comment in the open groups about creating a conference for all of 90 Minds and OASIS? Why would we spend the time to create two separate conferences - one 90 Minds only and one 90 Minds + OASIS? Pesonally I think we should expand the conference and include all but I was somewhat shot down with that suggestion.

Go for it. I am only involved to the extent I personally made promises to these oasis people which was that they'd be Added to an online collaboration. No promises of anything else was made or implies.

All I'm asking is which do you want - a conference for 90 Minds only or 90 Minds + OASIS?

90 Minds Only

I hear and appreciate your position Jeff. I was wondering about Wayne's. In the OASIS forums, he suggested that a wider partner conference would be a good idea so I have to ask ... why would we have two conferences? A 90 Minds exclusive and a separate 90 Minds + OASIS? Seems like a lot of work to plan one let alone two. I personally am in the camp of doing a joint conference - I think there would be huge benefits. We could always have an extra day for 90 Minds only or special 90 Minds only sessions if we want to maintain exclusivity of certain conference elements. Apart from the fact that there is a base cost to simply establishing a conference and a minimal cost to add more bodies, there's a lot to be said for having more folks involved and contributing to conversations. It would also be a good screening process to see which folks are ""serious"" and good candidates for full 90 Minds membership. Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?

How about this. And I don't know the proposed timing, say its a 1 day conference, first 4 hours is 90minds only, 2nd 4 hours all members with a different agenda? The Oasis members can drink at the bar for the 1st 4 hours :)

The concern I have is that OASIS members are trial members. A large percentage of them are not going to work out or participate. I think we need to give these folks time to prove their ability to collaborate. How much time? That's hard to say but I would say probably 6 months of regular ongoing collaboration should suffice. And at that point we would have a feel for their value to the group. I mentioned the conference idea not because I was going to do it - or thought we should - but because there's certainly some opportunity there for someone to come along and create such an event. However I realize that conferences are full time jobs -- probably for more than one person -- and very expensive to put on and with very high potential for initially loosing money.