[Eg-oversight-board] Statement of Clarification

[Kathy Lussier]

Hi all,

I want to provide some background from the perspective of a previous 
conference co-organizer, a former EOB member, and a former rep to the 
Conservancy.

Having served in the role as local organizer and also as an EOB 
conference committee rep, I can say both roles have their challenges. 
I'm sure everyone working on the 2016 conference, including Tanya and 
Grace, acted in a way they thought was best for the conference and for 
the project as a whole. I don't think anyone acted out of self-interest 
or the interests of their employer.

Looking at the specific communications, as related by Grace, I believe 
many of the actions she took and recommendations she made align with how 
we previously conducted conferences and with what I would have 
recommended if I were still serving in a role as a standing conference 
committee rep. For those who have not previously been involved in 
organizing an Evergreen conference, I want to provide some background on 
why I think these actions were appropriate.

- To maintain its non-profit status, the Conservancy has communicated to 
the project that sponsorship opportunities cannot be changed after the 
sponsorship package has been released. It presents an issue if one 
potential sponsor decides to, for example, go with a Gold package only 
to find out that another vendor was able to get more from the Platinum 
package than was originally advertised. I participated in the kickoff 
calls with Tony Sebro, attorney at the SFC, for both the Cambridge and 
Hood River conferences. He made this issue clear from the start of 
conference planning. I did not participate in the kickoff call with 
Raleigh because I was no longer a conference committee rep, so I can't 
say whether this information was communicated for the most recent team.

- There is some flexibility where we can create new sponsorship 
packages, similar to the birthday package Grace outlined in here e-mail. 
For example, looking back to the 2014 conference, we created a new 
sponsorship for Eventbrite so that they could waive our registration 
feeds. However, those who were on the Board at the time may remember 
that we had one issue with the Eventbrite conditions for that 
sponsorship. They wanted all of the confirmation e-mails to include a 
statement saying that Eventbrite was a sponsor for the conference (I 
don't recall the exact language). At the time, the Board felt 
uncomfortable with this request because the same opportunity hadn't been 
provided to other sponsors who had already committed to the conference. 
We resolved the issue by acknowledging all sponsors in the confirmation 
email. I believe this decision is one in which the Project set a 
precedent.  Even when it was legally permissible to create a new 
package, we didn't want to present opportunities for new sponsors that 
weren't available to the vendors who had already signed up to support 
the conference. This is a precedent I think the project should continue 
to maintain.

- I think few non-conference-organizers realize that the sponsorship for 
a specific function, particularly when it comes to the reception, 
supports only a fraction of the cost of that function. To an outsider, 
it may seem reasonable to allow the sponsor paying for a function to 
determine what type of food or entertainment is provided at that 
function. But the project is really funding a large percentage of that 
function. I don't now what the numbers were for Raleigh, but, in the 
case of Cambridge, the sponsorship didn't even cover half the cost of 
the reception. The project needs to have the flexibility to contain 
those costs as much as they can while also meeting contractual food & 
beverage minimums and providing what they believe is a quality 
conference experience to attendees. As Grace said, the sponsorships are 
there to offset costs. They are not there to involve sponsors in the 
planning.

- As far as giving welcome speeches at an event, I have attended other 
non-Evergreen conferences where speaking opportunities, perhaps during 
the Welcome session, were part of a sponsorship package. If we want to 
provide that opportunity, we can do so. It just needs to be part of a 
package that all vendors have an opportunity to support. The idea here 
is that we need to be fair to all potential exhibitors and sponsors. 
Changing the rules in the middle of the game is likely to cause 
frustrations among other sponsors who may not feel they were given an 
equal opportunity to do receive a particular benefit.

- Overall, I would say vendor/sponsor communications is something that 
can add a lot of stress to a local planning team that is already working 
hard to put on a great conference. If there is anything the Board can do 
to alleviate that stress and remove some of the burden from the 
shoulders of the local planning team, I think it would be a step in the 
right direction. There is the expected stress of getting enough sponsors 
to keep the conference in the black. But there was also a lot of 
unexpected stress. During the two years I worked on conference planning, 
we dealt with a) a vendor that was reluctant to provide a sponsorship 
because they were unhappy with a new policy adopted, with community 
support, by the Board b) a vendor that wanted additional conference 
registrations to go along with their sponsorship, and, in 2015, c) a 
vendor that wanted a custom package reflecting the benefits they were 
most interested in. In the last instance, we ultimately lost the 
sponsor, but we (we being the joint local and standing conference 
committee, in consultation with the EOB chair) felt it was better not to 
set a precedent that a vendor could pick and choose which benefits they 
received from various packages.

It may not sound like a lot of stress, but, sometimes, vendors can be 
very persistent in these requests, which sucks a lot of time from the 
conference planning process.  It really doesn't need to be the local 
planning team dealing with these issues and, in some ways, I think it's 
better if the same group handles sponsors from year to year. When a new 
team comes along, a vendor may see it as an opportunity to see if they 
can get a different answer than they received for previous conferences.

As far as the role of Conservancy rep, I believe it has traditionally 
been the rep's role to inform the Conservancy of votes taken by the EOB 
that require Conservancy attention. For the Cambridge conference, the 
rep, who also happened to be EOB chair, checked in once in a while just 
to see how our relationship with the Conservancy was going. However, 
when issues arose late in the conference planning process, it was the 
local planning committee that handled those issues. I was the rep during 
the 2015 conference, but I also was serving on the standing conference 
committee, so, even though I was involved in many discussions with the 
Conservancy, I don't think it was done in my role as Conservancy rep. 
Having said that, I do remember the discussion at the 2015 conference, 
and I have long believed that local conference volunteers, on top of 
everything else they are doing, should not have to deal with what can 
sometimes be unpleasant communications with the Conservancy. If the 
Conservancy rep can be an intermediary to resolve those issues, I think 
that's fine. Otherwise, I don't think this role should be include 
involvement in the particulars of conference planning. Clarifying this 
role in the by-laws may be a good thing.

I also wanted to talk a bit of the handoff that typically happens from 
conference to conference. It certainly does need improvement, as we have 
all agreed, but I don't want to leave people with the impression that no 
guidance is given to the incoming team. We have also gradually made 
improvements to the process over the past few years.

- When the Vancouver conference wrapped up, Ben Hyman handed off a 
Google drive folder to Amy and me with documents, budgets, etc from the 
2011, 2012, and 2013 conferences. He also met with us via phone to go 
through the post mortem typically done by the previous year's committee. 
Amy and I added a 2014 folder to that Google drive folder and handed it 
off to the Hood River team for 2015 and also had a similar phone call 
with Buzzy. I don't know if a similar phone call happened with the 
Raleigh team, but I do know that I shared the Google drive folder with 
Tanya early in the stages of the Raleigh conference planning process. 
Indeed, there is a lot of paperwork to go through in that folder, but 
Amy and I found it invaluable to consult it when we were confronted with 
specific questions about the conference.

- I do know Tony Sebro from the Conservancy typically has a kickoff 
phone call with the local team where, among other things, he talks about 
some of the sponsorship issues outlined above.

- After the Cambridge conference, in an effort to further improve the 
process, the Board created the Standing Conference Committee that would 
work on the conference in conjunction with the local team. The idea was 
that the local team should not reinvent the wheel every year.  If 
involved in the planning, this committee may recognize potential issues 
before they snowballed. For the 2015 conference, the local planning team 
met regularly with the standing committee to go through conference 
planning activities. I think this helped with communication. Perhaps we 
need to be clearer with the local planning team when they come on board 
that these joint meetings should happen.

- In 2015, in an effort to further improve the process, we developed the 
"Expectations of the Local Arrangements Committee" available at the 
bottom of 
http://wiki.evergreen-ils.org/doku.php?id=eg09:conference_nominations. 
Those expectations were shared with potential hosts during the site 
selection for the 2016 conference. Previously, local teams had worked 
off sample timelines from previous planners. These expectations included 
set deadlines for when the EOB expected to have certain tasks completed.

- There clearly needs to be more documentation around conference 
planning, and I'm confident that the process will get even better for 
the 2017 team.

I also concur with a lot of what Andrea said. The Evergreen community is 
a community of users, developers, volunteers and vendors. I think it's 
important for vendors to be an integral part of the community, and 
community involvement is something I look for when I am seeking with 
vendors. It tells me that they care about the Evergreen project and are 
not just about providing a service to customers. If a vendor or any 
other Board member, whether they are working for a library, for a state 
agency, or a library consortium or in a volunteer capacity, behaves 
inappropriately, then the Board should deal with the inappropriate 
behavior. I haven't seen indication yet of inappropriate behavior.

There are also a lot of gray areas in the Evergreen community on who is 
a vendor and who is not. We have some developers who have day jobs 
working for library organizations, but who also perform contract work in 
their off-hours time. Technically, MassLNC is now a service provider (or 
will be in another month) and were exhibitors at the last conference. 
However, I also consider this organization to be a strong representation 
of the Evergreen users who are partners in our project. We also are 
customers for the other vendors in the community. So the 
vendor/user/customer distinction is not very clear. I just want people 
to be careful in whatever direction is taken because restrictions 
against vendors being conference liaisons may impact more community 
members than originally intended.

Overall, as unpleasant as this recent experience may have been, I'm 
confident it will lead to better planning processes for future conferences.

Thanks to everyone who made it to the end of this e-mail!

Kathy








On 05/17/2016 01:47 PM, Grace Dunbar wrote:
>
> All,
>
> I appreciate Tanya’s thoughts on how the conference planning can be 
> improved.  There are many things that do need to be improved and the 
> EOB and conference committee are actively working on these changes. 
> However, I do take exception to the implication that there was a 
> conflict of interest in my role as the Chair of the standing 
> Conference Committee because I am employed by Equinox.  This hits me 
> particularly hard because this is not at all how Tanya clarified her 
> statements to me, in person, after the EOB meeting.
>
> I take my Board responsibilities very seriously and I strive to ensure 
> that, as a representative of the Project, regardless of my personal or 
> professional relationship with any group or individual, I treat them 
> equitably.
>
> I invite the current EOB, former EOB members, and any previous 
> Evergreen conference organizers to please weigh in with your opinions 
> on the guidelines and statements I provided in the course of the 2016 
> conference process.
>
> Below I have detailed, as best as my memory and fast email scraping 
> allows, the issues that involved other vendors and sponsorships for 
> the conference.   Please note that some of the issues that are 
> detailed below are issues where the Project, if not following the 
> guidelines, could inadvertently get the SFC in trouble with the IRS 
> and they could potentially lose their 501c3 status.  Hence, the issues 
> have implications outside our community.
>
> 1.)On May 13, 2015 GPLS broached the idea of a PINES Birthday Party 
> (separate from the reception).  Tanya asked me how this should be 
> included in the budget and she and I agreed that since this was 
> branded as a PINES birthday party with specific money they wanted to 
> put towards it, GPLS should handle that separately – in other words, 
> don’t put it in your budget if you’re not in control of how the money 
> is spent.  We agreed that it sounded like a good “after hours” event 
> separate from the Reception.
>
> a.In October, the SFC weighed in on the idea of a PINES birthday party 
> when it was brought up again.  In essence, the SFC stated that the 
> conference should add a specific sponsorship for the “Evergreen 
> birthday party” and allow all sponsors to participate, inviting 
> members from PINES to assist in the planning.  I echoed the concerns 
> the SFC had about the birthday party and gave my support to the SFC’s 
> plan.
>
> b.In January, the Hosts stated that GPLS would be sponsoring “cake, 
> champagne, and a band” for the reception. In email I asked Tanya not 
> to make statements of this nature since sponsors do not get to dictate 
> exactly how their contributions are spent. I also expressed concern 
> over two issues.
>
> i.The conference was in the red and the Hosts were committing funds to 
> non-essentials.  For those who have never done a conference of this 
> size, there is a food and beverage minimum of tens of thousands of 
> dollars that must be satisfied in house. I suggested that it was 
> irresponsible to spend money on bands and cake from outside sources 
> instead of satisfying the food and beverage minimum.
>
> ii.GPLS wanted to support the party monetarily; however, they were 
> unable to provide a sponsorship.  They emailed the SFC in February, 
> restating the intent to provide “cake, champagne, and a band” for the 
> “birthday party” with a plan to sell PINES t-shirts and have the 
> proceeds go toward the “extras” at the reception. Tony at the SFC and 
> I both voiced concerns over earmarked donations for the conference 
> that wasn’t part of the offered conference sponsorships.
>
> 1.To paraphrase something we have heard from the SFC in the past 
> regarding conferences, “…allowing sponsors to circumvent the project's 
> budget would prevent the project from using sponsorship income to 
> guard against shortfalls.”
>
> iii.My suggestion at this point to the Hosts was to offer a special 
> Birthday Party sponsorship to ALL sponsors.  The Host committee chose 
> not to pursue that option but agreed on March 3 to strike the cake and 
> champagne. The Host proposed that the EOB or NC Cardinal recognize the 
> ten years of Evergreen at the Reception and invite someone from GPLS 
> to say a few words.  I agreed with that approach.
>
> 1.Note that the cake was later ordered without any notification to the 
> conference committee.
>
> iv.The Host later stated that Emerald Data, who was the actual sponsor 
> of the Reception, would provide a “welcome speech” before introducing 
> someone from GPLS.  I stated that it was inappropriate for a vendor to 
> receive a platform of this nature when other vendors did not.  The 
> Breakfast sponsors and the Hackfest sponsors did not get to speak at 
> their sponsored events so I suggested (strongly) that NC Cardinal 
> provide the welcome and introduction for GPLS to speak.
>
> c.Emerald Data then requested to provide a “giveaway” at the 
> reception.  The conference committee was not informed as to what the 
> nature of this giveaway was and so my recommendation was to not 
> provide that option.  The conference provides space in the exhibits 
> area for giveaways and we traditionally don’t allow sponsors to use 
> their sponsored event as advertising.  Also, the SFC needs the 
> opportunity to “vet” giveaways.
>
> 2.)There was an issue that was not well understood regarding tote bag 
> inserts.
>
> a.I did not specifically cover tote bag inserts with the Hosts until 
> February when I sent a reminder of ‘Phase Three things to do before 
> the conference’. There was confusion over a previous email that listed 
> the SFC constraints on “swag” that is given out at the conference and 
> swag was conflated with tote bag inserts. The official position of the 
> conference (both the conference committee and the SFC) is that we do 
> not allow non-conference inserts into the official bags/packets.
>
> b.Unfortunately, the Hosts had already accepted some tote bag inserts 
> form a local organization NC Live and the NC Library for the Blind.  
> To further complicate matters, representatives from that NC Live were 
> being given complimentary registrations to the conference.  I 
> suggested removing the inserts and making them freely available on a 
> table.  The SFC agreed with the solution.
>
> i.I also requested that the free registrations be rescinded and 
> offered to “be the bad guy” and explain it to the registrants.  The 
> Host assured me that they would handle correcting this.
>
> ii.One NC Live free registration was never corrected.
>
> 3.)Free registrations
>
> a.There were two complimentary registrations provided by the Hosts to 
> two presenters – David Singleton (Charlotte Mecklenburg) and Julie 
> Walker (GPLS). I notified the Hosts that presenters were not provided 
> free registrations (with the exception of keynote speakers) and asked 
> the Host to correct it or to allow me to correct it.
>
> i.The Host indicated in email that it was corrected, however, these 
> were never corrected and these registrants did not pay registration fees.
>
> 4.)Emerald Data “wrote in” a sponsorship for $500 for Tote Bags on 
> their Sponsorship form.  This wasn’t a sponsorship that was offered on 
> the official form that went to all the potential sponsors and it 
> wasn’t on the Conference web site. Tanya stated that Emerald received 
> an outdated form with a Tote Bag sponsorship on it, however, tote bags 
> were never discussed as an official sponsorship.
>
> a.I asked Tanya to remove that sponsorship because we don’t offer 
> special sponsorships outside the official list lest we (the Project or 
> the Host) be accused of vendor bias.
>
> b.Tony Sebro, the SFC counsel also advocated for this course of action.
>
> c.The sponsorship was removed.
>
> 5.)Due to issues with inclusion of “extras” in a budget that was in 
> the red, I sent a request on February 24 to the Hosts to strike the 
> Band from the budget until such time as we could prove enough profit 
> to pay for the extra expense.   The Hosts responded, “ Right now the 
> Band expense is in the budget and I’m confident that we will be able 
> to meet all expenses.  Since we are using the Conservancy to pay 
> bills, I would assume that the Conservancy will pay the band bill out 
> of the Band lineitem.   I thought that general sponsorships paid for 
> items like this.”
>
> My response stated, “The funds that are brought in to cover the costs 
> of the conference are not to be spent at the discretion of the local 
> conference committee.  Those funds belong to the SFC who directs them 
> to our project.  Our project expenditures are directed by the EOB, not 
> the local conference committee.  We allow the local committees a lot 
> of leeway in conference planning since they know their area and the 
> venue best.  However, the final decision on any budgetary matters 
> rests with the EOB and SFC, not the local committee. As of now, with 
> the budget still in the red and the matter of how certain sponsorships 
> are being handled, please put the entertainment on hold until we can 
> resolve this matter.”
>
> 6.)Tanya stated in her clarification, “This conflict created a need 
> for another contact point very late in the planning process.”
>
> a.On February 17, I was notified by the Board Secretary, Chris Sharp, 
> that Tanya had been going to him privately to resolve issues for the 
> conference and to deal with the SFC, excluding the conference 
> committee altogether.
>
> b.If the issues discussed between Tanya, Chris, and the SFC included 
> the PINES sponsorship issues or anything regarding the Emerald Data 
> sponsorships, I would point out that there is a potential conflict of 
> interest in that involvement since GPLS is Chris’ employer and Emerald 
> Data is their vendor.
>
> 7.)Lastly, it is clear that the EOB needs to be more transparent about 
> issues surrounding past conferences.  This is not the first year that 
> a conference committee has been asked by Emerald Data to make 
> concessions or provide changes to sponsorships.  The reason my 
> responses were so firm on these issues was because of past problems 
> with this vendor at the Vancouver conference, the Cambridge 
> conference, and the Hood River conference.  The EOB has not discussed 
> these issues openly in order to preserve community harmony; however, 
> it seems it’s past time to bring more transparency to the process.
>
> 8.)The conference ultimately had a slim margin of profit, roughly 
> $1,023.00.  In my role as conference committee chair, I felt that I 
> did my best to uphold the conference values and structure in 
> accordance with past precedent, Project guidelines, and the SFC 
> rules.  The conference money is Project money and utmost care should 
> be taken by the Hosts to ensure each conference is adding, rather than 
> subtracting from the Evergreen Project’s coffers.  Should, heaven 
> forbid, we end up in some kind of a legal battle over the Evergreen 
> name or Trademark, we would need every dime the Project has and then 
> some.
>
>        I hope this clarifies any vendor/sponsor related issues that I 
> managed as the chair of the conference committee. I am, of course, 
> available for questions and clarifications.
>
>     Sincerely,
>
>     Grace
>
> I
>
>
> On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 11:26 AM, Ruth Frasur 
> <director at hagerstownlibrary.org 
> <mailto:director at hagerstownlibrary.org>> wrote:
>
>     Tanya Prokrym has sent this Statement of Clarification regarding
>     comments made during the Evergreen Oversight Board meeting at the
>     2016 Evergreen International Conference in Raleigh, N.C.  This
>     statement will be discussed during the next EOB meeting in the
>     #evergreen channel of IRC on Thursday, May 19 at 2:00 p.m.
>
>     -- 
>     Ruth Frasur
>     Director of the Historic(ally Awesome) Hagerstown - Jefferson
>     Township Library
>     10 W. College Street in Hagerstown, Indiana (47346)
>     p (765) 489-5632 <tel:%28765%29%20489-5632>; f (765) 489-5808
>     <tel:%28765%29%20489-5808>
>
>     *Our Kickin' Website <http://hagerstownlibrary.org>, Our Rockin'
>     Facebook Page <http://facebook.com/hjtplibrary>,  and The Nettle
>     Creek Players <http://nettlecreekplayers.com>*
>
>     _______________________________________________
>     eg-oversight-board mailing list
>     eg-oversight-board at list.evergreen-ils.org
>     <mailto:eg-oversight-board at list.evergreen-ils.org>
>     http://list.evergreen-ils.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/eg-oversight-board
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Grace Dunbar, Vice President
> Equinox - Open Your Library
> gdunbar at esilibrary.com <mailto:gdunbar at esilibrary.com>
> 1-877-OPEN-ILS  | www.esilibrary.com <http://www.esilibrary.com>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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-- 
Kathy Lussier
Project Coordinator
Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
(508) 343-0128
klussier at masslnc.org
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier

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