[Bundle-sponsorship-wg] International PyCon Prospectus

[Nick Coghlan]

On 12 April 2016 at 06:20, Betsy Waliszewski <betsy at python.org> wrote:
> Hi team,
>
> After discussing this with Ewa, we're going to put this project on hold
> until after PyCon. I've requested an invoice to pay for the design services
> so far. We can revisit adding clarity to the proposal after the conference
> is over and I have time to dedicate to this important project.

I agree that makes sense from a staff focus perspective, but would it
still be acceptable for us to pitch the prospectus directly in its
current form? I'm currently trying to explain to Red Hat's Open Source
& Standards team the differences between working with a public
interest charity and trade associations run in the interests of
sponsor members, as well as asking if a fee waiver for a year or two
would impact their current attitude of "We don't want to pay a modest
admin fee to help a public interest charity run a self-supporting
regional conference funding program". However, Red Hat's annual
budgeting cycle runs March -> February, so if we put the idea entirely
on hold from the PSF side until July or so (allowing a month for
post-PyCon wind down activities and bringing the new Board up to
speed), it would make more sense for me to defer that argument until
next financial year.

Regards,
Nick.

>
> Best,
>
> Betsy
>
> On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 8:30 PM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 15 March 2016 at 04:10, Betsy Waliszewski <betsy at python.org> wrote:
>> > Hi Nick,
>> >
>> > We're not using the google doc where you posted your comments. The PDF I
>> > sent around is our working document.
>>
>> Ah, nice - that *is* very attractive!
>>
>> > That being said, we do need to
>> > incorporate new language more clearly identifying the benefits and
>> > whatever
>> > discounts we decide to offer.
>>
>> Right, at the moment it isn't clear what the benefits are relative to
>> sponsoring directly, nor where the 15% program administration charge
>> is going to go. It may be helpful if there were a couple of sections
>> like:
>>
>> Program Sponsor Benefits:
>> * year-round acknowledgement on python.org in addition to any
>> acknowledgements on individual conference sites
>> * single point of financial contact for 10+ conferences
>> * consistent financial arrangements year-over-year
>> * delegated responsibility for compliance with financial regulations
>> in recipient countries
>>
>> Program Administration Activities:
>> * disbursing funds to participating conferences in compliance with
>> local and international regulations
>> * advising community-led conferences on working effectively with sponsors
>> * advising sponsors on working effectively with community-led conferences
>> * advising community-led conferences on responsibly managing financial
>> risks
>> * promoting and facilitating the addition of further community-led
>> conferences to the program
>> * collection and presentation of sponsorship details from
>> participating conferences in a standard format
>>
>> The first suggested point under "sponsor benefits" is a new one, but
>> something we could do pretty easily that represents a concrete perk
>> above and beyond sponsoring the individual conferences.
>>
>> > The challenge is that the only thing we can discount is the admin fee.
>> > Based
>> > on my feedback, even if we didn't charge any fees, I'm not convinced
>> > that
>> > any companies would take us up on what we're offering in the prospectus.
>>
>> We have a bit of a chicken & egg problem here - we need conference
>> organisers to get involved to make the program attractive to sponsors,
>> but we need sponsors to get involved to make the program attractive to
>> conference organisers.
>>
>> Given the somewhat experimental nature of the program, perhaps it
>> might make sense to offer a straight up fee waiver for the first year
>> or two for the inaugural sponsors? That would mean a greater
>> speculative investment on the PSF's part, but it could potentially get
>> us past the bootstrapping stage, and provide the initial impetus
>> needed to create a virtuous cycle of sponsor participation attracting
>> conference participation, which makes the program more attractive to
>> future sponsors, which makes it more obviously beneficial for
>> conferences to participate, etc...
>>
>> It would also mean we could be up front with the inaugural sponsors
>> that the 15% figure is a preliminary estimate for what we think would
>> be needed to make this program self-sustaining rather than
>> cross-subsidised by other PSF revenue raising activities, and we
>> wouldn't actually start charging the admin fee until we had a year or
>> two of real data to use to calibrate the appropriate amount.
>>
>> > Granted, we only sent the prospectus to 6-7 companies, so we don't have
>> > a
>> > lot of data to look at.
>>
>> Right, and a number of those are companies where their list of
>> sponsored Python conferences is already longer than the list in the
>> prospectus, so the value proposition for them is different from that
>> for organisations where the program will hopefully let them expand
>> their reach beyond what they could readily manage on their own.
>>
>> > I'm very willing to add copy to our working doc, but I need help with
>> > the
>> > wording. A page could be added before the "Build Your Own Bundle" page
>> > that
>> > shows the offer that is not "custom" or a la carte and the discount.
>> > Right
>> > now, we're only showing a custom option.
>>
>> Postponing the bundles to the 2nd year of the program is still
>> attractive from the point of view of keeping things as simple as we
>> can this time around. There are also other ways we could structure the
>> discounts, such as on a "length of continuous participation" basis
>> (since a sponsor organisation is likely to require more handholding in
>> the first year than they are in subsequent years), or in terms of
>> sheer number of conferences sponsored.
>>
>> So despite my advocacy for the "bundle discount" approach, I'm
>> becoming more of a fan of the "as thanks for helping us launch the
>> prospectus, first year sponsors will have their admin fees waived for
>> the first two years the international prospectus is in operation". We
>> likely do need to be explicit that the PSF doesn't plan to subsidise
>> sponsor's administration costs indefinitely, though - we're just
>> prepared to do it for a couple of years in order to gather the data we
>> need to figure out the actual costs of running the program.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Nick.
>>
>> >
>> > Betsy
>> >
>> > On Sat, Mar 12, 2016 at 6:28 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> On 12 March 2016 at 23:24, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at python.org> wrote:
>> >> > On 12.03.2016 08:55, Nick Coghlan wrote:
>> >> >> As far as covering costs goes, I think an important aspect of that
>> >> >> will be to be clear that bundling carries an expectation of reduced
>> >> >> customisation of benefits, at least at the PSF level - hence the fee
>> >> >> discounts.
>> >> >
>> >> > I'm not sure which fee discounts you are referring to here.
>> >>
>> >> I mean the proposal for distinct a la carte/regional/global rates for
>> >> the administration overhead - my working assumption from the start has
>> >> always been that conferences get their normal sponsorship amounts, and
>> >> we'd figure out some other way to cover the PSF's costs (whether that
>> >> was cross-subsidisation from PyCon US, covering it out of general
>> >> sponsorships, or applying an additional percentage to the bundles to
>> >> cover costs).
>> >>
>> >> The reason I specifically like the "15/7.5/3" administration charge
>> >> structure is that:
>> >>
>> >> * a self-sustaining program is preferable, since that provides more
>> >> scope for future hiring & grant making
>> >> * 50% and 80% are substantial enough discounts for potential sponsors
>> >> to appreciate them
>> >> * 20/10/4 feels too high, 10/5/2 feels too low, so 15/7.5/3 splits the
>> >> difference
>> >> * I except many of the PSF's costs in staff time to be incurred per
>> >> sponsor, rather than per event (registering with their supplier
>> >> management if they're not already PSF or PyCon sponsors, getting to
>> >> know the right points of contact within their event management
>> >> organisation, getting to know what they're generally interested in as
>> >> sponsor benefits, etc)
>> >> * for sponsors that opt for a bundle over a la carte, I'd still expect
>> >> their typical engagement with the smaller regional events to be low
>> >> (since they often won't have an on-site presence there - unless they
>> >> were planning to be involved in the event anyway, the cost in staff
>> >> time and travel would likely exceed the sponsorship)
>> >>
>> >> Consider the global Platinum sponsorship, for example - the admin fee
>> >> discount there ends up being just over $9000. Compared to a more
>> >> selective a la carte sponsorship, that's likely going to mean a
>> >> Platinum sponsorship for each of the 3 or 4 lowest cost conferences
>> >> participating in the prospectus - those are often also going to be the
>> >> ones where the return on investment for large sponsors is smallest,
>> >> but the potential return on investment for the PSF in terms of growing
>> >> the Python community is highest (it's much easier for a 150 person
>> >> conference to grow to 300 people than it is for a 750 person
>> >> conference to grow to 1500).
>> >>
>> >> Along those lines, I've posted a couple of comments in the document
>> >> suggesting a change in the way the administration charges for the
>> >> bundles are presented.
>> >>
>> >> Currently, the discounts are baked into the percentage used to
>> >> calculate the the administration charge line item. I believe it would
>> >> be preferable to always list the administration charge at the a la
>> >> carte rate, and then explicitly list the fee discount as a separate
>> >> line. Using the global Platinum sponsorship as an example again,
>> >> that's currently presented as:
>> >>
>> >> Funds distributed to conferences: 76590
>> >> Program administration charge (3%): 2298
>> >> Cost to sponsoring organisation: 78888
>> >>
>> >> I'd suggest instead presenting it as:
>> >>
>> >> Funds distributed to conferences: 76590
>> >> Program administration charge (15%): 11488
>> >> Administration charge discount (80%): -9191
>> >> Cost to sponsoring organisation: 78887
>> >>
>> >> (In that particular case, the rounding works out slightly differently,
>> >> but that's at most a dollar either way)
>> >>
>> >> Regards,
>> >> Nick.
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Betsy Waliszewski
>> > Python Software Foundation
>> > Event Coordinator / Administrator
>> > @betswaliszewski
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
>
>
>
>
> --
> Betsy Waliszewski
> Python Software Foundation
> Event Coordinator / Administrator
> @betswaliszewski



-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia