Re: [Debconf-team] Information gathered for travel sponsorship

[Holger Levsen <holger@layer-acht.org>]

Hi,

On Dienstag, 4. September 2012, Daniel Pocock wrote:
> > no. We only count money (or directly valuable ressources, usually things)
> > into account for sponsoring.
> > 
> > (I guesstimate) Half of the orgateam is freelancing, listing them as
> > sponsors is... pointless or even totally besides the point.
> Not completely pointless - it encourages more companies to follow the
> example of sending people on work time.
>
> Of course, if every company did that, and no company sends cash, there
> would be a problem: maybe just give 50% discount on sponsorship

ok, to be clearer: its not just pointless or besides the point, its outright 
harmful. (Starting with this discussion even...)

To illustrate my point: do you think holgerlevsen.de should have been a gold 
sponsor for debconf12? Given my monetary contributions (I paid 2 flights) plus 
my time involvement (and my rates) I definitly contributed 20k€ value.
(And there are quite some people like me... working hard and paying to be able 
to do so.)

And I don't think this should qualify as sponsorship at all. It (the money) 
could have been sponsorship if I gave the flight money to the sponsorsteam 
(for them to decide how to spend it) and not have bought tickets for myself.

Having work rewarded as sponsorship creates (at least) two big problems:

- is my work more valuable for DebConf, just because I happen to live in an 
area where the rates are higher? </rhetorical question> (Or taking this 
further: "If you value my work so little, why should I work for you?")

- we need to make those companies who actually give *money* to stand out as 
sponsors. Having 50 other sponsors all contributing foo+bar blurries this 
*heavily* and makes aquiring sponsors even harder.


cheers,
	Holger