Dear Bivio members,

I'm not sure how many of us have signed up to automatically
receive Club Cafe emails, but I'm hoping this message will
get to a few.

Every so often, I've broached the subject of sharing stock
presentations, but it has met with little response. Most,
if not all of us, are members of a club. And most of our
members take turns presenting new companies for possible
purchase.

I have always thought it was ridiculous to spend all that
time and effort on researching a new company, only to share
it with 7 of my closest friends, when there are so many
other people who might appreciate seeing it.

Likewise, if it's MY turn to present something, and I'm
short on time, I think it would be great to be able to take
someone else's work, do a little due diligence, and present
it to MY club (of course, giving credit to the original
author!).

Why do we present stocks in the club environment? Because
collectively we can accomplish more than we can
individually. What if we expand that to the entire Bivio
community?

I'm going to try this again. Is anyone interested in
sharing stock presentations? Would there be enough interest
or participation to have Bivio create a place for us to
upload them? Not all presentations will be equal. But
that's OK. Even within my own club, some of us write
elaborate reports while others do small bulleted versions.
(We find that a basic report format ensures that everyone is
providing the same information. It's the quantity that
differs.)

I just finished a stock presentation on Michaels Stores,
Inc. I uploaded it to my club website as a PDF file,
complete with the Value Line and the SSG. If anyone needs a
stock report fast, or they are simply interested in this
company, feel free to read it.

www.bivio.com/crowriver/files/reports & ssgs/reports
Look for Michaels Stores, Inc. Report (MIK)

If others are interested in sharing reports, please respond.

Sincerely,

Lynn Ostrem, President
Crow River Investment Club
garbagecop@foxinternet.net

Lynn Ostrem wrote:

>....cut....Is anyone interested in
>sharing stock presentations? Would there be enough interest
>or participation to have Bivio create a place for us to
>upload them? ...cut...
>

Lynn...

What an excellent idea. I think you're dead on and agree... after going
through a lot of effort, it's good to share what we may or may not find
worthy of our investment.

Maybe Rob/Paul can create a common place for files to be uploaded by
bivio members. The only issue of concern I see is the potential for
violating copyrights once uploads are posted.

John Munn

Hi Lynn,
I've always thought it would be a great idea and wondered why it has never
been done before! Are we looking for something on a monthly basis, weekly
basis, etc?? Or does it matter??

Steve Hayman
Pascagoula, MS

-----Original Message-----
From: club_cafe-owner@bivio.com [mailto:club_cafe-owner@bivio.com] On Behalf
Of Lynn Ostrem
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2006 4:11 PM
To: club_cafe@bivio.com
Subject: club_cafe: Sharing Stock Presentations

Dear Bivio members,

I'm not sure how many of us have signed up to automatically
receive Club Cafe emails, but I'm hoping this message will
get to a few.

Every so often, I've broached the subject of sharing stock
presentations, but it has met with little response. Most,
if not all of us, are members of a club. And most of our
members take turns presenting new companies for possible
purchase.

I have always thought it was ridiculous to spend all that
time and effort on researching a new company, only to share
it with 7 of my closest friends, when there are so many
other people who might appreciate seeing it.

Likewise, if it's MY turn to present something, and I'm
short on time, I think it would be great to be able to take
someone else's work, do a little due diligence, and present
it to MY club (of course, giving credit to the original
author!).

Why do we present stocks in the club environment? Because
collectively we can accomplish more than we can
individually. What if we expand that to the entire Bivio
community?

I'm going to try this again. Is anyone interested in
sharing stock presentations? Would there be enough interest
or participation to have Bivio create a place for us to
upload them? Not all presentations will be equal. But
that's OK. Even within my own club, some of us write
elaborate reports while others do small bulleted versions.
(We find that a basic report format ensures that everyone is
providing the same information. It's the quantity that
differs.)

I just finished a stock presentation on Michaels Stores,
Inc. I uploaded it to my club website as a PDF file,
complete with the Value Line and the SSG. If anyone needs a
stock report fast, or they are simply interested in this
company, feel free to read it.

www.bivio.com/crowriver/files/reports & ssgs/reports
Look for Michaels Stores, Inc. Report (MIK)

If others are interested in sharing reports, please respond.

Sincerely,

Lynn Ostrem, President
Crow River Investment Club
garbagecop@foxinternet.net

I for one would love to borrow the expertise of Lynn and her SSG's, just
think of the time and effort it would save me ;-) I do agree sharing
these studies is a good idea, and having a forum for it under bivio a good
way to implement it. However, to avoid wholesale freeloading, access
should be read only, not download, copy and paste, or print out. At least
browsers would have to make their own entries on their SSG's and hopefully
learn by referring to posted studies.

Great job on your analysis, Lynn. It was close to your buy figure today.
Best wishes, Gene

John Munn writes:
> Maybe Rob/Paul can create a common place for files to be uploaded by
> bivio members. The only issue of concern I see is the potential for
> violating copyrights once uploads are posted.

Members can now upload files to the Club Cafe. You can't make them
public just yet so just email support, and someone will make the file
public.

This is an experiment. Please don't delete files that you didn't
upload.

Rob

I'm so glad to hear that some of you are interested!

I totally agree that we should not upload materials that are subject to
copyright laws. My mistake. My report on Michaels was already complete,
and this is how I provide them to my members. In the future, only the
report, itself, should be made public. In the case of MY reports, you can
certainly write to me and I can send the full version privately! <G>

I don't consider a completed SSG to be copyright protected. It's my
understanding that raw data files are subject to protection, but a completed
SSG was meant to be shared among people who have the software to actually
open the files. I will continue to upload completed SSGs.

To address Gene's concerns, I feel the entire concept is based on sharing
them. As I said in my original post, if it's my turn to present a report
and my deadline is looming (!), it would be great to turn to a location
where I can choose something that is already done! I might present it in
its original format, complete with the author's name on it. My club
wouldn't mind where it came from, as long as I'm providing a presentation,
and it meets our minimum criteria. Or, I might build on the original report,
giving credit to the author for the original information.

I don't think there's any reason to take credit for someone else's work--or
hide where the report came from. For newer clubs, it would be a great
learning experience to study stock presentations made by more experienced
clubbers. And those of us with more experience can find some great stock
ideas from new clubbers that might be worthy of our own research! It's all
about sharing. And remember, for all the work we put into these reports,
the shelf life is very short! Better to allow others to benefit from them,
too.

Steve wrote:
> I've always thought it would be a great idea and wondered why it has never
> been done before! Are we looking for something on a monthly basis, weekly
> basis, etc?? Or does it matter??

Steve, it's not for lack of trying! This is the third time I've brought it
up since I joined Bivio back in 2001. If this works, then people would
simply upload a stock report whenever they write one! Maybe whole clubs can
participate, giving their Bivio webmaster permission to upload their
reports. In our case, Crow River is scheduled to have a new stock report
presented every month this year, except February and December (annual
meeting and Christmas party). I would ask the authors for permission to
upload them to a public place. (Ha! What am I talking about!? I do that
now! <G>)

Rob is willing to post attachments to the Club Cafe messages. Wouldn't that
mean that people would receive unsolicited attachments when these automatic
messages come into their inbox? That might cause us to lose Club Cafe
subscribers. I wouldn't want that to happen.

I'm thinking of creating a club site, possibly called
www.bivio.com/stockreports and a simple small link from the Bivio homepage,
similar to the link for public pages. Maybe they can make that particular
site open for uploading by all members. Maybe we'd have to submit them and
have Bivio do it for us. It would be great to see the latest 2-3 stock
report posted on the homepage like the clubs are! It's just an idea.

By the way, we've posted all our stock reports on our website since we
started. You can peruse them in our Files section, Reports & SSGs. You
would know what's current by the date.

Good discussion. This is the first time anyone has been interested! I have
always felt that we have a niche with Bivio--a common ground. There's a lot
we can do together, especially with such great support from Rob and the
crew! We just need to find a way to share stuff.

Lynn Ostrem, President
garbagecop@foxinternet.net
Crow River Investment Club
www.bivio.com/crowriver

Lynn Ostrem writes:
> Rob is willing to post attachments to the Club Cafe messages. Wouldn't that
> mean that people would receive unsolicited attachments when these automatic
> messages come into their inbox?

No. You upload them, just like you do for Crow River, to:
    
    http://www.club_cafe/files

You can then post a message saying there's a new file, explaining what
it is. Lynn, you have been elected as official moderator. :-) That
means, you are in charge of organizing the folders in the Club Cafe.

All members have permission to upload and delete right now. We'll
change it so you only have permission to delete files that you own,
and that all files posted are automatically public. This will take a
couple of months, because it's tax season, and we are totally swamped.

However, we are willing to take on the duty of making files public for
we fix the software to do the right thing.

I think this is a fantastic idea, and I'm so glad Lynn volunteered to
organize and moderate the files area. :-)

Thanks,
Rob