On Wed, 29 Dec 2010 04:05:46 -0500, Pablo Duboue <pablo.duboue@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 3:49 PM, Enis Sahinovic > <enis.sahinovic@gmail.com> wrote: > > 1) Leave prices from NYC conference > > Just for the record, I'm hoping we'll *lower* the prices from the NYC > conference. As a random data-point from an existing small sponsor, there's no way I'll pay 5k to be on the T-shirt. On the other hand, I'll be glad to have a good excuse to retire as a sponsor, since I'd not have done it last year if I was only slightly more sane. I also think that some of the people who really do want their logo on the Ts for business reasons (rather than some sort of odd tradition, as was my case) _will_ afford 5k, which is likely to increase the money that comes in, even if it burns off a few small sponsors. The reason not to do that would be if we expect to grow the numbers of small sponsors over time so that we're less dependent on large sponsors, but there are only so many logos one can fit on a T-shirt, so that's not going to be the reward we can offer an army of small sponsors anyway. One idea that an academic friend mentions to me on a regular basis is a "Poster Session" -- for small sponsors that want to push their company, but are never going to afford 5k, perhaps we could offer them a slot at a poster session. For those that don't know, a poster session is where people put a summary of their academic work into a poster, and then the posters are all put up in a room, and the audience get to wander about and ask the authors about their work -- the reason for these in academic circles is that they allow people to claim that they're presenting work at the conference, and so get their institution to pay for attendance. We could perhaps combine the poster session with the Cheese & Wine party. I'd guess that most of the small sponsors attend DebConf, so those that wanted to do so could "present" their company or whatever, meanwhile academics could sign up at an "Academic" rate (1k to make it fair?) which also gets them the right to present a poster (and means that attending doesn't cost them personally, doesn't count as holiday, and gets more money for DebConf). We may need to do something about being counted as an academic conference, but DebConf really ought to count as such a conference -- I can make enquiries about what would be required if this seems interesting. Cheers, Phil. -- |)| Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560] http://www.hands.com/ |-| HANDS.COM Ltd. http://www.uk.debian.org/ |(| 10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London E18 1NE ENGLAND
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