[Inpycon] Sponsorship for PyCon India 2018

[Noufal Ibrahim]

On 2017-12-01 03:27, Vijay Kumar wrote:
> On Thu, November 30, 2017 6:12 pm, Anand Chitipothu wrote:
>> I believe the role of sponsorship is more than fund raising. It is a
>> great way to connect python companies with the community. In the best
>> interest of python community, we should try to maximize the number of
>> companies that get connected in addition to making sure we raise 
>> enough
>> sponsorship to meet e expenses.
> 
> +1 for this. One approach is the "Contributor Ticket" model. Something
> along the lines of https://2016.pycon-au.org/sponsors/contributo

This is nice for people who just want to support the event but I don't 
think it adds much value for the startups themselves. A logo on stage 
and a link from the website is not much. I'm not sure if that will pull 
in any business or potential hires (which is usually what these 
companies are interested in).

I think Anand's thrust was that we should make a package that attracts 
tiny underfunded startups. This is my opinion anyway. They'd willingly 
throw the money at the conference just to be part of it. This involves 
two things.

1. Low cost (definitely less than 50k. Preferable less than 25k). This 
makes the barrier of entry low and there will be people who say "I don't 
know if it's worth it but what the heck, let's try
    it anyway. It doesn't cost much."

2. A tangible gain from coming. We cannot piss off the high paying 
sponsors who will have booth and other things at the event. However, 
just paying 10k or something and having a link on the website
    doesn't do much. A startup row which will be active from (say) 14:00 
to 17:00 on the first day where the startups can all be in one room with 
a row of tables. They can pitch their wares, organise
    little contests or whatever during that time. It won't be exclusive 
but will be along with other talks.

If both these things are there, there will be no reason for them to say 
no and we can attract a lot of them. This means, more job offers, more 
people etc.

Companies are a huge part of the "community" and given how much effort 
we're putting in to attract newbie speakers, we should do atleast that 
much to attract small companies. Not for the money but just to get the 
companies there.