good points. several publishers send books to LUGs as a matter of promotion, often hoping, or more strongly brow-beating, to get reviews. a stronger commitment seems in order for a place on the page. i like advertising supporters, i have to say, in the case their support is significant.
On Sat, 2008-08-02 at 20:29 -0700, Michael Paoli wrote:
Just my opinion ;-) but ...
There are also many other publishers (e.g. Apress) that also are willing to send free ("review copies") to BALUG, extend User Group (UG) discounts to BALUG member(s), and would like us to also display their banner. That (and other sponsors or major sponsors) going - at least on the main home page, I think is generally not a great idea ... can end up looking too cluttered/commercial/"noisy" and/or like BALUG's "sold out" to our supporting interests ... or something like that (well, different folks tend to interpret banners and such - especially on main home page - differently).
I'd be much more inclined to put any applicable such banner(s) (with links and other relevant information) on a separate contributors/contributing/sponsors page, e.g. something roughly like what I've drafted / mocked up here: http://www.test.balug.org/mpaoli/contributing/
I was sort of hoping for a site redo (at least first major phase) before LinuxWorld, but been a bit too busy, ... perhaps by September or so? :-) Feel free to have a look around: http://www.test.balug.org/mpaoli/ and let me know what you think ... or maybe hold that feedback until about Monday 2008-08-11, as I'll be pretty busy until about then (as will many that are rather involved with LinuxWorld, Picn*x, DEFCON, Debian Camp, etc.)
Quoting Andrew Fife afife@untangle.com:
O'Reilly treats BALUG pretty well with free copies of pretty much any book we want. Does anybody object to helping them out by displaying one of their discount banner ads? In addition to helping O'Reilly, members may appreciate knowing about the 35% discount. Here is a link to the various banners.
http://ug.oreilly.com/promote/discount/
P.S. If there is an O'Reilly book that you want, and there is at least a reasonable chance of doing a review, please let me know that I can request if for you.
-- Andrew Fife Untangle - The Open Source Network Gateway www.untangle.com/download
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