[Conferences] PyCon CZ -- serving alcohol at sponsor booth

[Filip Kłębczyk]

Hi Tomáš,

I'm not from PSF, but can give you some useful information from my
experience. Last year on PyCon PL one of the sponsors started to serve
beer from keg on its stand - it was for a short time (I think for 1
hour or less). They haven't mentioned about that to the organizers
earlier (probably should). Final result was other sponsor was annoyed,
because kind of large crowd appeared very fast blocking the passage
around other sponsor's stand. If we knew earlier we could place that
sponsor serving beer in a more suitable place.
For example on last Europython Google was serving beer and there was a
nice round area with kind of chillout zone to sit around. So I guess
serving alcohol by sponsors on conferences is nothing extraordinary.
Make also sure that the venue you are organizing events allows brining
alcohol from "external source". Sometimes you need to pay additional
fee for such right if you/sponsor don't order it from the venue. If
your venue is a university then they can prohibit any alcohol on the
conference - you should start from asking them in the first place.

Regards,
Filip



2015-09-01 11:26 GMT+02:00 Tomáš Ehrlich <tomas.ehrlich at gmail.com>:
> Hello,
> we’ve received very specific requirement from one of our potential sponsor. They don’t like the sponsor booths where developers can get t-shirts, other promotional stuff and talk to people from company. At last conference they saw that most of these booths were left without any interest.
>
> So, they come up with an idea, that they would have a minibar, where they would serve a small and limited shots. They stressed out that they don’t want to get drunk anyone, just to meet people in their own way.
>
>
> I don’t have opinion on either side. I drink alcohol rarely, so my opinion probably doesn’t count anyway. I’m open to all ideas: if they can keep it under control, why not. I’m definitely interested in PSF opinion, because PyCon is their trademark after all. The second very important opinion I’m going to get from university, where this PyCon is going to be held.
>
>
> Question for PSF (and anyone): Would you allow sponsor to serve alcohol (in very limited way) at their booth?
>
> Thank you for all responses
>     Tomas Ehrlich
>
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