[Bundle-sponsorship-wg] PROPOSAL: International PyCon Sponsorship Bundles

[Betsy Waliszewski]

On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 6:14 PM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On 1 Oct 2015 06:52, "Betsy Waliszewski" <betsy at python.org> wrote:
> >
> > I definitely like the idea of helping out the smaller conferences and
> would put together another bundle with that in mind. IMO, it's important to
> see if there's corporate interest first before spending more time creating
> bundles that may not sell.
>
> That's a key difference between doing this as a non-profit and doing it as
> a for profit corporation.
>
Yes, I come from a bottom line = profit company and it's refreshing to work
for a group whose goal is to help others.

> The primary goal here isn't revenue raising for the PSF itself - it's
> revenue raising for regional conferences to help reduce the stress &
> workload for volunteer organisers, as well as providing them with a set of
> well known regional or global sponsors that they can use to establish
> credibility with other potential sponsor organisations.
>
> That introduces a few major design goals:
>
> 1. Given a choice between "more work for the PSF" and "more work for
> volunteer conference organisers", put the burden on the PSF. One of the
> assumptions in the original cost model was that we'd likely need to hire at
> least one additional staff member to sustain this long term, and the
> administration fee structure was designed to reflect the estimated relative
> cost in PSF staff time, with lots of tuning options to let us ensure the
> program continued to pay for itself over time.
>
Fair enough. We can move forward with the assumption that we'll have staff
to maintain this program.

> 2. Don't try to hide the PSF overheads from sponsors or conference
> organisers. Bundle sponsors will mainly be outsourcing to the PSF the
> logistical details of dealing with volunteer organisers that are
> ill-prepared to cope with corporate supplier management systems.
>
I didn't mean to imply that I wanted to hide the overhead. I just wanted to
include it in the overall price of the bundle. The benefit that we're
offering sponsors who want to participate in multiple international events
should be spelled out in the prospectus. RE: "without having to figure out
how to pay community event organizers with no formal financial structure
around them."


> 3. We *want* to use the bundles to direct funding towards events without a
> clear ROI for sponsors, as it's those additional funds that provide the ROI
> for the *PSF*. We don't really want sponsors that are going for highly
> targeted investments to work through us - we're all about using the
> convenience of "one sponsorship bill" to bring well known sponsors to
> smaller events that they can then use to help bootstrap themselves into
> being larger events.
>
Everyone has a need for ROI, in whatever form. My experience is different,
to be sure, but we do need to show sponsors that it's worth their while to
work with us.

> > Potential sponsors have to make sure that their $$ are well-spent and
> that the ROI is worth the cost.
>
> As noted above, we're actually OK with sponsors operating in that targeted
> investment mode bypassing the PSF and sponsoring the underlying conferences
> directly, as we're not adding any value for the wider Python community in
> those cases.
>
> Instead, the bundles and administration fee structure in the original
> proposal were deliberately designed to create a convenience/precision
> trade-off for sponsors - they could get the simplicity of one bill, once a
> year, but they had to either agree to sponsor conferences without an
> obvious immediate ROI, or else accept that the more selective arrangements
> require a larger time commitment on the PSF side, and hence are less
> efficient administratively.
>
This is the ROI that I'm talking about -  "convenience/precision trade-off
for sponsors -  the simplicity of one bill, once a year." That's what will
get us all to the same end point - "making it easier for smaller regional
events to bootstrap themselves into becoming larger events."

> > Ideally, it would be good to get feedback ahead of time from companies
> we think might be interested to see what they want. Without that, we could
> end up creating what we think they want, not what they actually want. Do we
> have any intel on that?
>
> Yep, that's how the idea started - a couple of major sponsors asked us to
> put a program like this together, as they wanted to be able to sponsor "all
> the PyCons" (to quote one of them) without having to figure out how to pay
> community event organisers with no formal financial structure around them.
>
> However, what sponsors want is a less important consideration to me than
> the community benefit we're aiming to provide
>
I understand and agree that the community benefit is our goal, but we need
*sponsors* to be able to achieve that, so their needs *do* have to be taken
under consideration.

> (which is to make it easier for smaller regional events to bootstrap
> themselves into becoming larger events). The design of the international
> prospectus is then about creating an offering that's interesting to
> sponsors, while still meeting that community goal.
>
 It may take some time, but I feel confident we can get to the place were
we have a solid prospectus to offer that, as you say, Nick - is
"interesting to sponsors, while still meeting that community goal."

Betsy

> Cheers,
> Nick.
>
> >
> > Betsy
> >
> > On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 1:37 PM, Ewa Jodlowska <ewa at python.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi Betsy -
> >>
> >>> Start out with one bundle for 2016, initially launching it as an
> invitation only pilot program. Include conferences of >1,000 attendees. We
> can test the waters to see what the interest is.
> >>
> >>
> >> IMO, this pilot trial is very limited and only helps conferences who
> already do not need help with sponsorship meanwhile PyCon Ukraine, Python
> Namibia, etc do. Even though this process may seem like the goal is to make
> it easy for large corporations to sponsor PyCons, I do think that we also
> have to add the goal of helping smaller conferences get sponsorships.
> >>
> >> How do you foresee this continuing after the pilot phase?
> >>
> >> Best regards,
> >>
> >> Ewa
> >> Director of Operations
> >> Python Software Foundation
> >> Cell: 415-319-5237
> >>
> >> On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 12:50 PM, Betsy Waliszewski <betsy at python.org>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Hi all,
> >>>
> >>> I've shared with you a draft proposal for an International PyCon
> Sponsorship Bundle. For this proposal, I chose to offer just one bundle.
> This way, it should be more easily managed than the original proposal put
> together by the committee. We could use it as a trial to gauge corporate
> interest.
> >>>
> >>> It may already be too late to offer this for 2016, but I wanted to
> continue the conversation anyway, since I know this is a challenging
> project.
> >>>
> >>>
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WHjrQ_pD8-7H_r68Y-EYKldUsZUe2FWuuvVdr52O1jY/edit#
> >>>
> >>> Thanks for the opportunity to work on this.
> >>>
> >>> Betsy
> >>> --
> >>> Betsy Waliszewski
> >>> Python Software Foundation
> >>> Event Coordinator / Administrator
> >>> @betswaliszewski
>


-- 
Betsy Waliszewski
Python Software Foundation
Event Coordinator / Administrator
@betswaliszewski
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