Re: Sponsorship of club services

[turnbull@example.com (Stephen J. Turnbull)]

Sorry about the accidental duplicate post.  I've been offline too
long.  Why, you might ask?

On July 19th I got married to Satoko Fukushima of Kyoto in Capitola,
California (near Santa Cruz) by the Rev. Sumio Koga (bilingual
ceremony!!).  We left for the US on July 2, took a week's cruise up
the Inside Passage of Alaska for our honeymoon, and returned last
night.

Missed you all :-) but not that much ;-) 'cause I had things to do in
RealSpace :-) :-)  It is *good* to be back, though!

I wonder if my absence had anything to do with the traffic being low
:-)

Best regards to Ted, of course.  Hope you'll still be around in
virtual reality occasionally!

>>>>> "Craig" == C Oda <craig@example.com> writes:

    Craig> It is my belief that the only way for TLUG to continue to
    Craig> prosper is to seek corporate sponsorship of club services.

Well, that depends on whether we are really a drinking club or live in 
Cyberspace.  I like the meetings, but unfortunately, mostly I have to
commune via cyberspace.

    Craig> It occurred to me that this mailing list also requires a
    Craig> commitment from a company.
[snip]
    Craig> The company benefits from having advertising.  The
    Craig> organization benefits from having a stable, supported,
    Craig> mailing list system.

Both true, *if* this is a true commitment from the company.  However,
do you have a commitment from your boss or whoever has to prioritize
stuff like mailing list upgrade vs installing something that a large
corporate customer asked for?  (I'm not suggesting TLUG is a higher
priority, but if it doesn't get some priority, then it's just your
hobby, still.)

This is *not* to deny the very clear benefits of TWICS's contribution
of CPU cycles and disk space, which are present until TWICS decides to
cut us off (which probably will be "never", of course).

I also am a little concerned about implications vis-a-vis other
providers.  I would hope that that commitment from your boss implies
transparency to people who have had good experiences with GOL or Nifty
or (shudder) bad experiences with TWICS.

-- 
                           Stephen John Turnbull
University of Tsukuba                                        Yaseppochi-Gumi
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences  http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/
Tennodai 1-1-1, Tsukuba, 305 JAPAN                 turnbull@example.com
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