[Inpycon] Sponsorships

[Noufal Ibrahim]

On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 2:37 PM, Anand Balachandran Pillai
<abpillai at gmail.com> wrote:
[..]
>  What is the sponsorship amount you are looking at ? And why ?
>  Can we discuss how we are planning to split the sponsorship
>  amount for expenses ? For egs. if we say 5L then how much for
>  the venue, how much others etc ?

The budget outline which I sent out is here
http://wiki.python.org/moin/PyConIndia2010/BudgetEstimates

It covers the breakdown and the 5.15L number comes from there. I'm
sure it has deficiencies since it's not yet well discussed but it's a
starting point.

It does need to be finalised and then the tiering which is roughly
outlined on http://wiki.python.org/moin/PyConIndia2010/SponsorShip
before we actually start talking to folks.

>  Regarding Zynga, I have my reservations about approaching them.
>  First of all they are a controversial company who have had their
>  own problems with the so-called "social games" that are
>  a facade to social networking scams (with or without their knowledge,
>  doesn't matter). Secondly I know it as a fact they don't use Python
>  there since I have a couple of friends there, so why bother ?

Yup. I know that for a fact as well.

I would approach them if we're desperate but not at the outset. I
wouldn't mind approaching non-python companies though. ThoughtWorks
helped out last time and I'm grateful.


>  We should definitely try and approach the publishers however.
>  Preferably those like O'Reilly and Packt who are working on
>  Python books and have helped to popularize the language.

Makes sense.
I'm for making cold calls (or warm ones if people have contacts) to
these organisations to see if they're willing. I had a mail from a
publisher last year (forgot which one) who wanted to sponsor and help
out with "conference proceedings". I'll fish out that mail and open a
thread there as well.


>  Google - I am not so sure. When google takes part in an event,
>  they like to leave their stamp in it, so either the event has to
>  change for them or they won't pitch in IMHO. You cannot expect
>  Google to be a silver sponsor when company XYZ is a
>  diamond sponsor - they don't do that AFAIK.

No harm talking to them if we have sufficiently high level contacts. I
don't think dismissing a sponsor with an upfront cursory analysis is a
good idea. If we're looking for sponsors, we'll *have* to compromise.
As long as it doesn't butt in on the important aspects of the conf.
(eg. if they want a stall, if they want their names on the swag bags
etc.), I think we can manage.

What do you feel?



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