My company is slowly forming a sponsorship philosophy:
"If we can sponsor to get Perl to run, faster, better and everywhere.
Our applications will be able to run faster, better and everywhere with
no or minimum effort".
Sponsoring YAS/YEF and the Perl community is in my opinion the (in-)direct way
to do this so now I just have to make somekind of budget/account for this.
I contacted the Nordic Perl Workshop organizers (Oslo.pm) and told them
that logicLAB was interested in sponsoring the upcoming workshop.
They got back to me saying my sponsorship was welcome, then things kind
of stranded...
At the same time I contacted YAPC::Europe 2006 organizers
(Birmingham.pm) and inquired about sponsorship, I got two documents
including a "Birmingham Perl Mongers Sponsorship Prospectus", the whole
approach was quite different from the communication with the NPW
organizers.
The prospect took me a bit aback, it looks really professional and when
I looked into the different packages I could see that my target
sponsorship budget would "buy" me the smallest sponsorship available -
and all I thought was "hey what happeneded to the grassroots part???"
I thought my sponsorship budget was generous based on the sponsorships
sizes we received for the Nordic Perl Workshop.
I have organized two workshops in Copenhagen first time with no
sponsors the second time with several small sponsorships, second year's
surplus covering for the loss the first year, these things costed close
to nothing and super-gold-platinum-tequila-boat-ride sponsorships would just
seem silly.
Both years we had a philosphy of just having the workshops work out and
we got t-shirts, speakers dinner, invited speakers and everything both
years.
So what is the need for the colossus sponsor packages for a grass root
event like the YAPC::Europe???
I have NO idea what the cost is for a YAPC - but my conclusion is that
becomming a YAPC sponsor is out of my league. I think my money is
better spent on a Perl workshop since, the profiling will be better -
and by submitting a paper to YAPC::Europe or any workshop (and getting
it accepted of course), would let me get live on stage and state
company name and whatever I wanted to say for free???
The above marketing hack has probably been used before by others.
Yes, I still consider submitting a paper to YAPC::Europe in Birmingham
and I will be giving two talks in Oslo, but this is for another reason
than promoting my company, I regard that as a positive
side-effect, but I do open-source software and my marketing and
distribution is channeled through the open-source community.
I guess I will be a lot wiser by the 30th. of june, the deadline for
YAPC::Europe hosting applications and I expect to submit an application
on the behalf of the Copenhagen Perl Mongers.
Hi, thank you for the kind remarks made about our prospectus.
Organising a multi-tracked three day conference is a pretty large undertaking, and involves managing a large budget, with many variables. In order to keep the conference fee low, raising sponsorship is an essential part of the undertaking.
We're sorry you found some of the costs above your expectations, but if you are interested there may be other items you can help out with - lanyards being one of the many things that springs to mind.
As a potential sponsor, we are very interested to hear feedback, and would invite you to write to us at organisers@birmingham2006.com with your opinions.
Good luck with your bid for 2007, and can we take this opportunity to extend the hand of friendship in offering support and sharing our experiences with you should you be successfull.
Re:Sponsorship @ birmingham 2006
jonasbn on 2006-06-01T10:51:48
Thanks for the reponse, I was a bit afraid the post could be misinterpreted.
I can however inform you that I am now officially sponsoring the Nordic Perl Workshop (I just got my website up and running again) - and I am investigating becoming a lanyard sponsor for the YAPC::Europe in Birmingham.
