Sponsorships for 2011
Greetings all, I just got a mail from a "reputable foreign company" telling me that they're interested in sponsoring PyCon 2011 asking me for our sponsorship information. They're allocating their budgets and want to reserve some money for the conference here. I think this is our cue to get our act together and "start". I've forwarded the email to Kausik. Let's get some ideas of overall expenses and budgets right away so that we can get some ideas on how we want to do this. Here are the things that will add to our expenses (from the last 2 years) in decreasing order of amount - Foreign delegates (approx 1.5L for someone from North America) - T-shirts - Food - A/V - Wifi infrastructure (let's outsource this to a professional this time) - Venue (if we're plannnig to go for a paid place) This year, we can stretch a little and maybe do print ads in the appropriate magazines and newspapers. We might also be able to arrange limited accommodation for people from outside the city where it's conducted on a first come first serve basis. So, let's get started! Thanks --
Hi All I think if we put the Sponsorship notification before March we may be able get some really big sponsors for the event . -- ********************************** JAGANADH G http://jaganadhg.freeflux.net/blog
On Sat, Jan 15 2011, JAGANADH G wrote:
Hi All
I think if we put the Sponsorship notification before March we may be able get some really big sponsors for the event .
Sooner the better. Unless we have something *really* hampering us, we needn't wait till March just to come up with a budget and a notification. We need't have the website completely up. We can create PDFs of the sponsorship information and send it out to these interested parties. --
On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 06:45, Noufal Ibrahim <noufal@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Jan 15 2011, JAGANADH G wrote:
Hi All
I think if we put the Sponsorship notification before March we may be able get some really big sponsors for the event .
Sooner the better. Unless we have something *really* hampering us, we needn't wait till March just to come up with a budget and a notification.
That's right. Some companies start deliberating a year in advance on which event to sponsor for their next year's marketing budget. Getting a word in edge-wise early on helps ....note, its not a guarantee that they will sponsor, but we can get the word out early. -- Regards, vid ॥ http://svaksha.com
On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 11:47 AM, Noufal Ibrahim <noufal@gmail.com> wrote:
Greetings all, I just got a mail from a "reputable foreign company" telling me that they're interested in sponsoring PyCon 2011 asking me for our sponsorship information. They're allocating their budgets and want to reserve some money for the conference here.
I think this is our cue to get our act together and "start". I've forwarded the email to Kausik.
Let's get some ideas of overall expenses and budgets right away so that we can get some ideas on how we want to do this.
Here are the things that will add to our expenses (from the last 2 years) in decreasing order of amount - Foreign delegates (approx 1.5L for someone from North America) - T-shirts - Food - A/V - Wifi infrastructure (let's outsource this to a professional this time) - Venue (if we're plannnig to go for a paid place)
This year, we can stretch a little and maybe do print ads in the appropriate magazines and newspapers.
I'd suggest not spend much money on promotion and instead do these two activities For an event with some FOSS touch best would be barter... I think some of the leading IT magazines will be interested in being a media partner, which means you dont pay for advertisements. They will get a logo. It may not be much, but this is what everyone basically does these days. The magazine guys can be provided a table and chair to display their magazines. Also if someone can take pains contact naukri.com and other job sites, and ask them to send an e-mail inviting just about everyone who has shown Python as a skillset, there were some 12k odd resumes if I remember right. We can give the job site a logo on the site, banner T Shirt etc. If they can do multiple mails as a co-sponsor, it would really add value... Trust me this would give us a very good coverage, more than any advertisement in any daily newspaper... A decent newspaper ad in Hindu (which's the leading daily in Chennai) will cost you a bomb ( 1 L upwards). Instead please use that money to sponsor some Python evangelism exercises or provide better food.
We might also be able to arrange limited accommodation for people from outside the city where it's conducted on a first come first serve basis.
So, let's get started!
Thanks
-- _______________________________________________ Inpycon mailing list Inpycon@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
-- Ramdas S +91 9342 583 065
On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 06:31, Ramdas S <ramdaz@gmail.com> wrote:
This year, we can stretch a little and maybe do print ads in the appropriate magazines and newspapers.
I'd suggest not spend much money on promotion and instead do these two activities
+1, a print ad (or radio/TV media ad) would be very expensive and not worth the return on investment as your target market/audience is very niche and different. Getting a media partnership in return for smaller sops would be more advantageous budget-wise. Regarding sponsorships, I'd like to know which wikipage should be used -- can I use the one from last year or has that changed? -- is there something more that needs to be added to the sponsorship wiki-page?
We might also be able to arrange limited accommodation for people from outside the city where it's conducted on a first come first serve basis.
If there are surplus funds, rather than spending on commercial media advertisements, it would be more useful if subsidies were given in terms of accommodation or travel reimbursements, etc.. </zero-paise worth> -- Regards, vid ॥ http://svaksha.com
This is a side issue and not central to the main thing which is planning the budget. So, let's stop this here. On Sat, Jan 15 2011, Ramdas S wrote: [...]
I'd suggest not spend much money on promotion and instead do these two activities
For an event with some FOSS touch best would be barter...
I think some of the leading IT magazines will be interested in being a media partner, which means you dont pay for advertisements. They will get a logo. It may not be much, but this is what everyone basically does these days. The magazine guys can be provided a table and chair to display their magazines.
That's possible. I was just scraping my brain for things that might cost money.
Also if someone can take pains contact naukri.com and other job sites, and ask them to send an e-mail inviting just about everyone who has shown Python as a skillset, there were some 12k odd resumes if I remember right. We can give the job site a logo on the site, banner T Shirt etc. If they can do multiple mails as a co-sponsor, it would really add value...
Are you serious about this? The quality of people on Naukri is, in my experience, very poor and not the kind of crowd I want to spend time attracting to what I think (or want to think) is a "hacker" event. I don't want to do a "if you have a resume on Naukri, don't come" but I certainly wouldn't want channel publicity through Naukri. Their audience is just not the kind of people that'd make for a good conference. I'd much prefer that the event gets posted on /. or HN and the crowd there becomes aware of it rather than on Naukri, monster etc.
Trust me this would give us a very good coverage, more than any advertisement in any daily newspaper...
Perhaps but more important than quantity of coverage is the audience we reach out to. The Naukri idea gets a -1 from me personally. [...] --
On 15 January 2011 11:47, Noufal Ibrahim <noufal@gmail.com> wrote:
Greetings all, I just got a mail from a "reputable foreign company" telling me that they're interested in sponsoring PyCon 2011 asking me for our sponsorship information. They're allocating their budgets and want to reserve some money for the conference here.
I think this is our cue to get our act together and "start". I've forwarded the email to Kausik.
Let's get some ideas of overall expenses and budgets right away so that we can get some ideas on how we want to do this.
Here are the things that will add to our expenses (from the last 2 years) in decreasing order of amount - Foreign delegates (approx 1.5L for someone from North America)
Hi, i feel if we are not getting PF or some one else to share this, then we should not do this. If we are able to raise this much, then I suggest that we spend it on more local impact programs. - sree
On Mon, 2011-01-17 at 09:38 +0530, Sreekanth S Rameshaiah wrote:
Hi, i feel if we are not getting PF or some one else to share this, then we should not do this. If we are able to raise this much, then I suggest that we spend it on more local impact programs.
btw, what happened to the scheme of using some the surplus from last time to give bounties - this could also be tied into the marketing effort. -- regards Kenneth Gonsalves
On Mon, Jan 17 2011, Sreekanth S Rameshaiah wrote: [...]
Hi, i feel if we are not getting PF or some one else to share this, then we should not do this. If we are able to raise this much, then I suggest that we spend it on more local impact programs.
[...] I'm not sure. PyCon is *the* main thing and I think, atleast for now, we should focus on making that affordable and world class. Once that happens, we can start smaller things that will have more local impact. --
On Sat, Jan 15 2011, Noufal Ibrahim wrote: [...]
Let's get some ideas of overall expenses and budgets right away so that we can get some ideas on how we want to do this.
[...] While the discussions going on here are beneficial, I think we're missing the point. We need to come up with some numbers for the potential sponsor. --
Sorry guys, had been travelling the weekend and could not start off on this thread earlier. So here are the possible numbers we are looking at. Event Ground Cost: Good Lunch at 90 - 100 rs per plate for 600 people on both days (an order of 600 pax can be servered for 700 people) = 600 * 100 * 2 = 1,20,000/- (Vegetarian) Tea, Coffee, etc for the two days = 40, 000 /- Videography, Mics, projectors etc = 40,000 /- (worst case scenario, we can avail these facilities inside campus if they have them) T Shirts at 110 rs * 600 = 66,000 /- (again this is an aprox number and can swing on either side by a few thousands) Banners, Badges, and other Branding Material = 15,000 /- all put together we will require around 2,90,000 ~ 3,00,000 INR. to run a barebone event with no venue cost. any more capital that we raise can go towards better shwag kits and such. ideally we should look at 3 tiers 1 * 2.5 lakhs - 3 lakhs from the main sponsor ( 5000 - 6000 USD ) 2 * 1 lakh from the silver sponsors ( 2000 USD) 4 * 30,000 - 50,000 from the third tier (1.2 lakhs - 2 lakhs) this will raise a capital of around 4.7 to 6 lakhs. with such a capital we can run a fabulous event, consider reducing event registration fee, start new initiatives and think about building a corpus for the association (if we need to). how do the numbers sound, cheers, kausik -- Kausikram Krishnasayee Company: http://silverstripesoftware.com | Webpage: kausikram.in | Blog: blog.kausikram.in | Twitter: http://twitter.com/kausikram | Email: kausikram@gmail.com | Mobile: +91 9884246490
On Mon, Jan 17 2011, kausikram krishnasayee wrote: [...]
Event Ground Cost: Good Lunch at 90 - 100 rs per plate for 600 people on both days (an order of 600 pax can be servered for 700 people) = 600 * 100 * 2 = 1,20,000/- (Vegetarian) Tea, Coffee, etc for the two days = 40, 000 /- Videography, Mics, projectors etc = 40,000 /- (worst case scenario, we can avail these facilities inside campus if they have them)
True. We will still need professional videographers and possibly their own audio equipment if it'll improve the recording quality. MSRIT had good audio facilities but the poor audio on some of the DVDs was attributed to "bad facilities" by the videographer since we didn't use his gear.
T Shirts at 110 rs * 600 = 66,000 /- (again this is an aprox number and can swing on either side by a few thousands) Banners, Badges, and other Branding Material = 15,000 /-
40k for Tea/Coffee? Isn't that rather high? You've missed wifi. We need to get it done professionally this time. It's annoying when people get a burst of strong signal and the first thing they do is to tweet about how the wifi sucks. You've also missed out foreign delegates. Since we had one last year, I think people will expect one this year and it's a good boost for the community in general. Bringing and accomodating one person will cost around 1.5L. It will be slightly cheaper if we're considering someone from Europe. Also, you've not factored in the registration costs. We can use that offset the components that will change based on number of participants (e.g. food, swag etc.)
all put together we will require around 2,90,000 ~ 3,00,000 INR. to run a barebone event with no venue cost. any more capital that we raise can go towards better shwag kits and such. ideally we should look at 3 tiers
1 * 2.5 lakhs - 3 lakhs from the main sponsor ( 5000 - 6000 USD ) 2 * 1 lakh from the silver sponsors ( 2000 USD) 4 * 30,000 - 50,000 from the third tier (1.2 lakhs - 2 lakhs)
This sounds okay I think. Just factor in the wifi. I haven't contacted anyone about it so I don't have numbers. The rest of what you've said sounds reasonable to me.
this will raise a capital of around 4.7 to 6 lakhs. with such a capital we can run a fabulous event, consider reducing event registration fee, start new initiatives and think about building a corpus for the association (if we need to).
There's some leftover money from last year which we can use too I think but that's only emergency cushioning. [...] --
You've missed wifi. We need to get it done professionally this time. It's annoying when people get a burst of strong signal and the first thing they do is to tweet about how the wifi sucks.
Oops my bad. most of the telephone operators give you ad hoc connection at 512kbps to 2 Mbps for somewhere around 20 - 30 k. i will get the exact numbers by the end of the week. but they will only give you one lead setting up the routers would be our onus trying to figure out if someone can do that for us a) for free and good will, b) for monies.
You've also missed out foreign delegates. Since we had one last year, I think people will expect one this year and it's a good boost for the community in general. Bringing and accomodating one person will cost around 1.5L. It will be slightly cheaper if we're considering someone from Europe.
yeah i did not factor in that cost for a bear bone event, but yes i think 1.5 lakhs should be a nice cap on that. Also, you've not factored in the registration costs. We can use that
offset the components that will change based on number of participants (e.g. food, swag etc.)
did not factor in these revenues as i wanted to ideally solve all event costs with sponsorships.that way the registration revenue can be spent on giving of a heavier swag kit. -- Kausikram Krishnasayee Company: http://silverstripesoftware.com | Webpage: kausikram.in | Blog: blog.kausikram.in | Twitter: http://twitter.com/kausikram | Email: kausikram@gmail.com | Mobile: +91 9884246490
On Mon, Jan 17 2011, kausikram krishnasayee wrote:
You've missed wifi. We need to get it done professionally this time. It's annoying when people get a burst of strong signal and the first thing they do is to tweet about how the wifi sucks.
Oops my bad. most of the telephone operators give you ad hoc connection at 512kbps to 2 Mbps for somewhere around 20 - 30 k. i will get the exact numbers by the end of the week. but they will only give you one lead setting up the routers would be our onus trying to figure out if someone can do that for us a) for free and good will, b) for monies.
If we can get someone reliable to set it up for decent monies, it would be better. It's an important part of the infrastructure and having someone paid to "take care of it" is a good thing IMO. However, 20-30k sounds reasonable (maybe we can offset it a little using some advertising - wifi sponsored by FooTel etc.). Add that to the cost.
You've also missed out foreign delegates. Since we had one last year, I think people will expect one this year and it's a good boost for the community in general. Bringing and accomodating one person will cost around 1.5L. It will be slightly cheaper if we're considering someone from Europe.
yeah i did not factor in that cost for a bear bone event, but yes i think 1.5 lakhs should be a nice cap on that.
It's the 3rd time we're conducting it so it's not really barebones anymore. I think we can surely get one.
Also, you've not factored in the registration costs. We can use that
offset the components that will change based on number of participants (e.g. food, swag etc.)
did not factor in these revenues as i wanted to ideally solve all event costs with sponsorships.that way the registration revenue can be spent on giving of a heavier swag kit.
Possible. But it's nice for accounting if the registration fees offset all the variable expenses so that it scales well. Anyway, your numbers look fine to me. Unless someone else points out something we've missed, I think we can use these to create a simple sponsorship brochure and send it out to the company. --
participants (7)
-
JAGANADH G -
kausikram krishnasayee -
Kenneth Gonsalves -
Noufal Ibrahim -
Ramdas S -
Sreekanth S Rameshaiah -
॥ स्वक्ष ॥