From noufal at gmail.com  Tue Aug 11 20:08:30 2009
From: noufal at gmail.com (Noufal Ibrahim)
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2009 23:38:30 +0530
Subject: [Conferences] Sponsors and delegate contact info
Message-ID: <9963e56e0908111108v5989fc1g25ffe92c859030d8@mail.gmail.com>

Hello everyone,
   I hope this mail finds you all in good health and spirits.

   I haven't sent any mails to this list before so I'll start by
saying that my name is Noufal Ibrahim and I'm heading the organisation
of the first Indian Pycon scheduled to take place at the end of
September 2009.

   We're looking for corporate sponsors ie. companies in the country
that are into Python and who we can make part of the local Python
community. We have a couple of people who are interested and we're
following up.

   One of the things that a potential sponsor asked for is the list of
delegates along with their contact information (email addresses). We
never anticipated this and didn't put up a privacy policy on our site
when we first launched. The support of this sponsor would go a long
way in covering our costs and actually making the conference a
success. They promise that they won't spam people. I presume that
they're going to use it for their recruiting.   I'm in a bit of
dilemma whether to accept or not.

    A couple of the more experienced people tell me that this is a
standard practice during most corporate conferences. I wanted to know
if any of the other PyCon organisers faced such a situation and if
they did, what was their course of action.

Thanks.

-- 
~noufal
http://nibrahim.net.in

From doug.napoleone at gmail.com  Tue Aug 11 21:10:34 2009
From: doug.napoleone at gmail.com (Douglas Napoleone)
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:10:34 -0400 (EST)
Subject: [Conferences] Sponsors and delegate contact info
In-Reply-To: <9963e56e0908111108v5989fc1g25ffe92c859030d8@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <fy90ced0td27sa5hkvUYAxe124vaj_firegpg@mail.gmail.com>



On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 2:08 PM, Noufal Ibrahim<noufal at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> ? I hope this mail finds you all in good health and spirits.
>
> ? I haven't sent any mails to this list before so I'll start by
> saying that my name is Noufal Ibrahim and I'm heading the organisation
> of the first Indian Pycon scheduled to take place at the end of
> September 2009.
>
> ? We're looking for corporate sponsors ie. companies in the country
> that are into Python and who we can make part of the local Python
> community. We have a couple of people who are interested and we're
> following up.
>
> ? One of the things that a potential sponsor asked for is the list of
> delegates along with their contact information (email addresses). We
> never anticipated this and didn't put up a privacy policy on our site
> when we first launched. The support of this sponsor would go a long
> way in covering our costs and actually making the conference a
> success. They promise that they won't spam people. I presume that
> they're going to use it for their recruiting. ? I'm in a bit of
> dilemma whether to accept or not.
We have often gotten this request from corporate sponsors and even some people who claimed to be a sponsor but were not. We have never given out this information to sponsors. We do have on our registration form an opt-in for receiving e-mails from the PSF/Organizers, but this does not include sponsors.

Instead we created a linked-in non-profit Conference group account and whitelisted all registrants who checked off they were willing to receive e-mails from us. This whitelist is not used by linked-in, nor is a request sent unless you specifically ask for this. Those people whom already have an account on linked in will notice that they can join the group by clicking a button when they log in (or they can dismiss it). We also allowed the sponsors to join the linked in group.

this provides a direct targeted group for the sponsors. These are only people interested in actually hearing from sponsors, and provides a single group e-mail address for them to contact attendees, and provides them with much greater demographic information via public profiles. This is a win-win for both attendees and sponsors.

If a anyone abuses the group (sponsor or attendee), as the maintainer of the group you can remove them and block them.

 I have only heard of one person not being satisfied by this option. They had spammed the pycon-reg mailing list trying to get the information and would never say exactly which sponsor they represented (the e-mail was from a hotmail address.)

The create group page is here:
http://www.linkedin.com/createGroup?displayCreate=

and lists the control options.
You can upload a simple CSV file for a whitelist.

I require non-whitelisted accounts to be approved by the admins as we get a bunch of marketing firms and sales people trying to join to harvest information otherwise. I always check the requests against the attendee list and request information from people whom do not match. Most I never hear back from, the rest are up front about what they are after.

Hope this helps.

    -Doug


> ? ?A couple of the more experienced people tell me that this is a
> standard practice during most corporate conferences. I wanted to know
> if any of the other PyCon organisers faced such a situation and if
> they did, what was their course of action.
>
> Thanks.
>
> --
> ~noufal
> http://nibrahim.net.in
> _______________________________________________
> Conferences mailing list: Conferences at python.org
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/conferences
>
> This is an open list with open archives; sensitive or confidential information should not be discussed here.
>

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From rasky at develer.com  Wed Aug 12 00:05:29 2009
From: rasky at develer.com (Giovanni Bajo)
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:05:29 +0200
Subject: [Conferences] Sponsors and delegate contact info
In-Reply-To: <fy90ced0td27sa5hkvUYAxe124vaj_firegpg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <fy90ced0td27sa5hkvUYAxe124vaj_firegpg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <43b92444997556e53a3f4012e035dd90@develer.com>

On Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:10:34 -0400 (EST), Douglas Napoleone
<doug.napoleone at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 2:08 PM, Noufal Ibrahim<noufal at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello everyone,
>> ? I hope this mail finds you all in good health and spirits.
>>
>> ? I haven't sent any mails to this list before so I'll start by
>> saying that my name is Noufal Ibrahim and I'm heading the organisation
>> of the first Indian Pycon scheduled to take place at the end of
>> September 2009.
>>
>> ? We're looking for corporate sponsors ie. companies in the country
>> that are into Python and who we can make part of the local Python
>> community. We have a couple of people who are interested and we're
>> following up.
>>
>> ? One of the things that a potential sponsor asked for is the list of
>> delegates along with their contact information (email addresses). We
>> never anticipated this and didn't put up a privacy policy on our site
>> when we first launched. The support of this sponsor would go a long
>> way in covering our costs and actually making the conference a
>> success. They promise that they won't spam people. I presume that
>> they're going to use it for their recruiting. ? I'm in a bit of
>> dilemma whether to accept or not.
> We have often gotten this request from corporate sponsors and even some
> people who claimed to be a sponsor but were not. We have never given out
> this information to sponsors. We do have on our registration form an
opt-in
> for receiving e-mails from the PSF/Organizers, but this does not include
> sponsors.

Same here in Italy. We have opt-in for e-mails about Python Italia
Association, but not for sponsors. The rationale (based on our own
perception) is that most people attending PyCons really hate advertistments
and specifically advertisment via e-mail, so it would be a mistake to even
allow this as an opt-in. It is true that, in business conferences, sponsors
usually obtain a list of attendees, but my opinion is that this applies
only to non-technical conferences, or at least non-highly-technical
conferenes (or better: non-geek conferences :)).

This notwithstanding, it once happened that one sponsor, not satisfied by
our refusal to provide him with a list of e-mail, managed to come up with a
list and send spam: he basically spent not sure how many hours googling
around e-mail addresses of people that (he thought) joined the conference,
using blog posts, newsgroups, etc. as reference; eg: if he could find an
e-mail of a person that once said in a IRC transcript "yes, I'll be at
PyCon Italy this year", he would put it into the list. He also used the
official list of speakers, of course. What happened is that a few people
contacted us in anger saying that we did not have the right to give out
their e-mail address -- which was true, in fact, we hadn't :)
-- 
Giovanni Bajo
Develer S.r.l.
http://www.develer.com

From funthyme at gmail.com  Wed Aug 12 12:48:19 2009
From: funthyme at gmail.com (John Pinner)
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:48:19 +0100
Subject: [Conferences] Sponsors and delegate contact info
In-Reply-To: <9963e56e0908111108v5989fc1g25ffe92c859030d8@mail.gmail.com>
References: <9963e56e0908111108v5989fc1g25ffe92c859030d8@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <ff8a32f0908120348n21ce17a3kcbb2ab3660d38561@mail.gmail.com>

Hello,

2009/8/11 Noufal Ibrahim <noufal at gmail.com>

> Hello everyone,
>   I hope this mail finds you all in good health and spirits.
>
>   I haven't sent any mails to this list before so I'll start by
> saying that my name is Noufal Ibrahim and I'm heading the organisation
> of the first Indian Pycon scheduled to take place at the end of
> September 2009.
>

Good luck with this!

>
>   We're looking for corporate sponsors ie. companies in the country
> that are into Python and who we can make part of the local Python
> community. We have a couple of people who are interested and we're
> following up.
>
>   One of the things that a potential sponsor asked for is the list of
> delegates along with their contact information (email addresses). We
> never anticipated this and didn't put up a privacy policy on our site
> when we first launched. The support of this sponsor would go a long
> way in covering our costs and actually making the conference a
> success. They promise that they won't spam people. I presume that
> they're going to use it for their recruiting.   I'm in a bit of
> dilemma whether to accept or not.
>

I suggest that you tell them that if they attend and take part in the
conference then they will learn the contact details of all the people they
are interested in anyway. This is what Google do, using sponsored
conferences as cheap targetted recruiting exercises. They collect personal
details using incentives like a prize draw, and no one seems to be offended
by this. Other companies do the same (Oracle and Ableton at EuroPython for
example).

>
>    A couple of the more experienced people tell me that this is a
> standard practice during most corporate conferences. I wanted to know
> if any of the other PyCon organisers faced such a situation and if
> they did, what was their course of action.
>

We have not been asked for this at PyCon UK, nor at the EuroPythons with
which I've been involved. I think that we would refuse.

Best wishes,

John
--
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From facundobatista at gmail.com  Wed Aug 12 15:03:29 2009
From: facundobatista at gmail.com (Facundo Batista)
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:03:29 -0300
Subject: [Conferences] Sponsors and delegate contact info
In-Reply-To: <9963e56e0908111108v5989fc1g25ffe92c859030d8@mail.gmail.com>
References: <9963e56e0908111108v5989fc1g25ffe92c859030d8@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <e04bdf310908120603m4b868bacja17824307c0ba4da@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 3:08 PM, Noufal Ibrahim<noufal at gmail.com> wrote:

> ? One of the things that a potential sponsor asked for is the list of
> delegates along with their contact information (email addresses). We
> never anticipated this and didn't put up a privacy policy on our site
> when we first launched. The support of this sponsor would go a long
> way in covering our costs and actually making the conference a
> success. They promise that they won't spam people. I presume that
> they're going to use it for their recruiting. ? I'm in a bit of
> dilemma whether to accept or not.

We explicitly offered to sponsors "the list of names and mail
addresses of those who explicitly wanted to give you this
information", and in the registration web site (pycon-tech, ;), we put
a checkbox (by default *not* marked) that says "I want to give my info
to sponsors".

Regards,

-- 
.    Facundo

Blog: http://www.taniquetil.com.ar/plog/
PyAr: http://www.python.org/ar/

From noufal at gmail.com  Wed Aug 12 16:22:39 2009
From: noufal at gmail.com (Noufal Ibrahim)
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:52:39 +0530
Subject: [Conferences] Sponsors and delegate contact info
In-Reply-To: <e04bdf310908120603m4b868bacja17824307c0ba4da@mail.gmail.com>
References: <9963e56e0908111108v5989fc1g25ffe92c859030d8@mail.gmail.com>
	<e04bdf310908120603m4b868bacja17824307c0ba4da@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <9963e56e0908120722s3c027071kb29e70e52f7405f9@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 6:33 PM, Facundo
Batista<facundobatista at gmail.com> wrote:
[..]
> We explicitly offered to sponsors "the list of names and mail
> addresses of those who explicitly wanted to give you this
> information", and in the registration web site (pycon-tech, ;), we put
> a checkbox (by default *not* marked) that says "I want to give my info
> to sponsors".

Thanks for the advice everyone. I would have loved to do it this way
but the problem is that we didn't have such checkbox when people
registered. Notifying everyone now will be hard.

-- 
~noufal
http://nibrahim.net.in

From aahz at pythoncraft.com  Wed Aug 12 16:29:52 2009
From: aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz)
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2009 07:29:52 -0700
Subject: [Conferences] Sponsors and delegate contact info
In-Reply-To: <9963e56e0908120722s3c027071kb29e70e52f7405f9@mail.gmail.com>
References: <9963e56e0908111108v5989fc1g25ffe92c859030d8@mail.gmail.com>
	<e04bdf310908120603m4b868bacja17824307c0ba4da@mail.gmail.com>
	<9963e56e0908120722s3c027071kb29e70e52f7405f9@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20090812142952.GB29365@panix.com>

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009, Noufal Ibrahim wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 6:33 PM, Facundo
> Batista<facundobatista at gmail.com> wrote:
> [..]
>>
>> We explicitly offered to sponsors "the list of names and mail
>> addresses of those who explicitly wanted to give you this
>> information", and in the registration web site (pycon-tech, ;), we put
>> a checkbox (by default *not* marked) that says "I want to give my info
>> to sponsors".
> 
> Thanks for the advice everyone. I would have loved to do it this way
> but the problem is that we didn't have such checkbox when people
> registered. Notifying everyone now will be hard.

At this point, the most you can/should do IMO would be to spam the
registration list.  I suggest that you send out a generic status update
for the conference, with an, "Oh, by the way, we have a sponsor who would
like to get in touch with attendees -- if you're interested, please go to
this URL."

You might want to check into your local laws, they may even prohibit
sharing information in the absence of opt-in and your sponsor ought to
want not to get into legal trouble.
-- 
Aahz (aahz at pythoncraft.com)           <*>         http://www.pythoncraft.com/

"...string iteration isn't about treating strings as sequences of strings, 
it's about treating strings as sequences of characters.  The fact that
characters are also strings is the reason we have problems, but characters 
are strings for other good reasons."  --Aahz