The Broke Developers Group Post-Meeting Report

Heyla, all!


First of all, I'd like to extend a warm thank you to those were able to make it to the group meeting on October 5, 2007. While only a few attended, the meeting still managed to be amazingly productive, lasting a total of 9 hours!


I'd also like to extend an even warmer thank you to those few people who were able to give me due notice that they were going to be unable to attend Friday's meeting. I hope that this summary will prove sufficient to fill you in on the day's discussion.


With that said, let us move on to the items that were discussed on Friday:


1. The first item to be discussed was, of course, the group's official new headquarters: The Broke Dev. Group House. As many of us already know, this house was bought by DavyRocket earlier last week. No sooner did he buy this house than he generously named it The Broke Dev. Group House, donating the use of it to our group! Thank you, once again, Davy, for such a generous donation!


2. The second item to be discussed was our brand new group web site. I would advise everyone in the group to please keep an eye on the posts made to this web site, for not everything I post will be e-mailed to the group. More, I may update the news I e-mail to everyone through this site, rather than constantly e-mailing everyone updates.


3. The third item discussed was the establishment of group rules and event rules that I expect our members to follow. You may read those rules on the group site, which can be found through the appropriate links on the right side bar.


4. The fourth item discussed was the grand opening of Geea's brand new section on The Voice of There: The Broke Developers Showcase! As promised, Geea also managed to have the staff of There Fun Times link to this section, which you can find, here.


Please, if you would like your items to be showcased in this section, e-mail me your product pictures. I will then forward those pictures, along with your name and auction links, to Geea.


5. The fifth item discussed was the idea of hiring 2 employees for the group, one male and one female, to help push our items. These employees will have a base pay of 500 tbux a week, which will be paid through the group funds for as long as the funds last. (After that, we may dicuss whether the group wishes to keep these employees.) However, as an incentive to really push everyone's products, equally, we wish to offer a weekly 1k bonus to the employee if he or she can manage to sell at least 1 item from each and every group member. This 1k bonus should be paid out by the entire group, each contributing a few tbux each to total that 1k bonus. This is a fair deal, as everyone will have benefited from such an extraordinary push.


The question as to whether we can be certain that a recent sale was due to an employee or through another means of advertisement is solved by requiring the employee to make a daily sales report on who he or she sold to and what items were sold on the Broke Dev. Employees forum. (DavyRocket has already created this group.) From this list, we can cross-reference exactly who bought what in our transaction history by going to our profile, then clicking the link labelled "Transaction History." From there, we can click on the individual transactions to see what was bought or sold and by whom. While I understand that a few members have paid for front page advertising, please be assured that the majority of us have not. Thus, we will be able to easily tell exactly whether or not the sale was due to an employee or through some other means.


We already managed to hire one person, already, by the name of Miss_Doctor. We are still looking for a male avie to help push the male-oriented products.


For more information on how the employment process is to be carried out, please keep an eye out for the debut of the Broke Dev. Employees web site, which will feature a detailed employees manual that will outline the conditions of employment, how payments will be received, as well as any other pertinent information that needs to be shared.


6. Those who attended the meeting agreed to hold the Broke Developers Halloween Showcase on October 19, 2007, at around 5 or 6 pm, Pacific Standard Time. While having Halloween-themed items isn't necessary to participate in the showcase, be advised that our guests will be seeking items according to this theme!

El and Davy had come up with the splendid idea of holding a mini-event every showcase, from quests, to dog obstacle courses, to summons challenges, that our guests can take part in. Not only will this add an extra element of fun for our guests once they have finished perusing our items, but it will give us a way to enter our guests in the raffle (or, at least, one of the raffles). As we never really got to make use of the quest idea from our last showcase, we will be holding another mini-quest for this one. NickieWally, one of our newest members, has bravely volunteered to attempt the writing of this quest. Don't worry, Nickie, V, Davy, and El are all experienced quest writers, and I'm sure if you asked nicely, any of them would be more than happy to help you with this task!

In addition, after speaking to a few members of the group beforehand and having proposed this idea to those who had attended the meeting, I've come to the conclusion that asking at least one member every month to doanate, for the purposes of our monthly showcase raffles, at least one of the free items they receive upon the approval of their submissions is not too much to ask. This group is designed to help everyone, and it isn't fair for a member to reap the benefits without contributing even that little bit to the group.

The donated items for the Halloween showcase has been covered, so those members who have not donated to the group need not worry this time around. The items to be raffled off in our first Halloween showcase will be a limited edition vehicle by teely, a men's outfit by Dj, a women's outfit by Hurt, a men's outfit by me, and a women's outfit by me. I felt that for our very first Halloween showcase, we should really make it a gala event, with plenty of prizes and fun, which is why we're having so many items raffled off, this time. With plenty of planning and time to advertise, the hope is that, this time, such a big raffle will earn us a fairly decent turnout for our first Halloween event.

For reference, here is a complete list of people who have donated so much to the group, in terms of time, items, and/or tbux, at this point in time:

DavyRocket
DJ_Phoenix
eleanorrigby
Hurt
Kasss
NickieWally
teelynn518
vmcl1998


7. Another issue discussed at the meeting was what we should do with the group funds. Those who attended felt that it was better to use the funds in ways that will help generate more cash for our members, mainly advertising, which was why we agreed that using some of the funds to help pay our two employees would be a good investment.

We also chose to invest 2,000 tbux of our group funds on a quest kit for the group's showcases and other events. As our quests will also be used to aid in the heavy promotion of our group's products, it, too has been considered an advertising expense.

At this point, if anyone has any other advertising ideas that will help our group as a whole, please let me know via e-mail, IM, our group forums, or by leaving comments on this post at our web site. (In order to leave comments, you must have an account with www.blogger.com. This may also require a gmail account, which can be easily created.)


8. Finally, Hurt proposed a wonderful idea that I think would be both fun and profitable for our group to take part in. Hurt is part of a design company, and every now and then, in order to generate profits for every person in the company, they would each take part in designing pieces of an outfit, which they would submit under their own names, but in the description, name this outfit as part of a project by the group. They would then pick at least one part of the outfit to get front page advertising. This part of the outfit would link to the other pieces. In this way, the entire group can still get front page advertising, as buyers will invariably attempt to buy all parts of a well-made outfit.

I was thinking that, on a volunteer basis only, of course, our group can engage in a similar practice. At this point, those who had attended Friday's meeting are in the process of experimenting with our chosen theme. Once we've ironed out the bugs in this project, we will unveil the theme to the group, and give instructions in how everyone, should they choose to do so, can participate in this project. Those who participate in the project will help chip in cash to put the chosen item on the front page. From there, we can only hope that our project will garner enough attention from the people of There to earn us a decent profit. This is why our project is on a volunteer basis, only. We can't guarantee that something like this, especially a first attempt, will give us any real prrofit. But as the saying goes, with great risks come great rewards!

And that wraps up the summary of a nine-hour group meeting. If you feel exhausted from just reading this, imagine how the participants felt during the live meeting!

Hoping to hear from you,
TheKeeper