[EuroPython] Sharing EPC financial risk

[Dario Lopez-Kästen]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tom Deprez" <tom@aragne.com>
To: <europython@python.org>; "Magnus Lyckå" <magnus@thinkware.se>
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2003 10:53 AM
Subject: Re: [EuroPython] Sharing EPC financial risk



> This all concludes to me that nobody in the python world really wants to
pay
> for things like this (see last 2 EPC years). If now at a sudden they
would,
> it would make me happy, but I would also have a bitter feeling.
[..snip..]
>
> hehe, forget it. Nobody wants to sponsor... look at last EPC conferences.
> And I don't think you would get any sponsor when you tell them: thanks for
> the add, but know that it might get higher if the conference goes down.
> (They wouldn't even pay for the add, if they knew the conference could
> fail...)

Here are two suggestions:

1) The loss of an EPC shoudl be inherited from previous events, so that if
any EPC turns a profit, then that should go to cover the loss from previous
year. This of course suggests some sort of continutity of the entity behind
the EPC... (nudge, nudge... ;).

2) There has to active chasing of companies to support an event such as
this. Companies will not themselves pay if thet can avoid it.

The failure fo Python companies to sponsor an event like EPC can be
interpreted this way: the companies are not that large, they usually operate
in a limited geographic area and simply do not have the money/commercial
interest to invest in sponsoring an event like EPC. Perhaps it simply is
that the Python companies are too smallish and the Python market not big
enough yet to attract big sponsorships like the way, say an Oracle
conference would.


This should lead us to ask the following: is it too expensive for small
python companies to sponor an conference? Probably yes, which means that we
have to find new ways of getting sponsored, offer different packages, lower
the prices, accept other means of sponshorship... If we see that sponsorship
of the event is not what we expect, then we need to ask companies what if
and how they would like to contribute, and meet halfways - after all, a
little sponsorship is better than none at all :)

BTW, did we ask companies like IBM to sponsor an EPC? Any hardware
companies, like Dell, Compaq or HP? We could ride on the Linux bandwagon and
get sponsorship that way...

> > I guess it would be easier to construct such a joint risk
> > sharing system if there was some formal organization that
> > could be a contractual partner.
>
> Also see the Zope-Europe association, how hard it is form them to get some
> company members.
> This all sounds nice in theory, but in practice it doesn't.
> Everytime when money gets involved it doesn't work, which in my feeling is
> very pitty.

Right, but let's not get overwhelmed by the apparent failures of others - it
doesn't mean that that will happen to us.

BTW, I am sure that Zope-Europe will turn around sooner or later.

/dario

- --------------------------------------------------------------------
Dario Lopez-Kästen, IT Systems & Services Chalmers University of Tech.