The following is from the Indianapolis Users Group Vendor Guidelines. I'd like to hear the comments of the group to see if this works for everyone. If you have any comments, please post them. After a while, I'll probably put up a poll and we can 'offically' vote on them to be our guidelines.

Their meeting format which we'll initially adopt is to alternate social gatherings and technical meetings. I'd like to see our social gatherings have a presentation from one of our users as opposed to strictly a meet and greet.-----

The social gatherings are sponsored by one or two vendors which are identified at the beginning of the event and they have 5-10 minutes to do a history of/new products/etc speech. The sponsoring vendor(s) cover any costs involved such as food/drink/room rental. All vendors are welcome and encouraged to come to the social gatherings as this is the outlet to pitch their goods. It is a very open format with social/professional networking being the main goal.

To keep the technical meetings actually technical and not a 2-3 hour sales pitch I require a vendor to bring in one of their customers and demonstrate/explain in depth what and how they have used said vendors solution(s) in a real world environment, or do some type of case study. I do allow a 5-10 minute window for the sponsoring vendor to do a mini pitch, but then we dive right into the technical stuff. Here again other vendors are welcome to come, but it is 'known' that this is not the time to push their products. Again, the sponsoring vendor(s) provides food/beverage/room rental.