Re: [Debconf-team] Thoughts on changing "Permanent sponsors" to a more descriptive "Hosting sponsors"?
On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 2:27 AM, Joerg Jaspert <joerg@debconf.org> wrote:
> On 13031 March 1977, Brian Gupta wrote:
>
>>> No.
>>> They do contribute at least the value of a Bronze Sponsor.
>>> And they do it year-round.
>> I think we need to look at this objectively.
>
>> Let's break it down.. I don't know the quantity or sizing of VM that
>> each hosting provider contributes.. nor do I have an exact count of
>> the domains.
>
> Linode and GPLHost provide VMs, the rest are providing real hardware
> (usually one of the biggest options you can find on their sites, from
> around the times we got them, in one case even larger).
>
>> But let's start with a couple of examples and see what we would get if
>> we spent the equivalent of a bronze level sponsorship with two of
>> these sponsors. I am using CHF 1 = $1 for ease of comparison. IE:
>> $2000.
>
>> DNS: Gandi.net DNS domains for .org are $15.50/year. $2000/year would
>> get you 129 domains. (or more if you shopped around). I suspect we
>> have at most 14 domains, or the cash equivalent of $217/year.
>
> Right, Gandi does not add up so high.
>
>> Hosting: One of our hosting sponsors, Linode, charges between
>> $19.95/month for their smallest VMs to $$799 for their largest. $2000
>> would get us between 10 and zero VMs. (Guessing closer to 10 as I
>> doubt they are giving us VMs with 20GB of RAM.) Depending on what
>> these hosting providers are giving us, it's possible, but not certain,
>> that they are providing bronze level equivalency in sponsorship. My
>> guess is they aren't because I don't believe DebConf has huge
>> infrastructure needs, but would need details to work the math.
>
> We do have some interesting needs, but anyways, in that calculation you
> totally miss what it means to us to have the machines all the
> time. Always. Before DC6 we didn't. And it wasn't nice to get the stuff
> all back, always.
I don't quite follow? In any case we are going on DC13. Server
hardware has dropped quite a bit in price in the past 8 years, and it
is comparatively easy to get sponsored machines/vms. I'll also add
that over the years, the bar for becoming a featured financial
sponsor has gone up. e.g. we've dropped the steel tier and generally
raised the levels required for the other tiers, while lowering the
benefits provided to the lower tiers.
>>> Moving them to some subpage, like 2nd class sponsors, just because it is
>>> not money, is a sure way to lose them.
>> I don't know what the answer is, but the fact is that today they are
>> more prominently displayed than financial sponsors today. I believe
>> this warrants further discussion. My feeling is that if their "in
>> kind" contribution has a cash equivalency value of or near a
>> corresponding "Metal level" they should also be listed at that level.
>
> I don't want, nor do they need, to be more prominently displayed than
> financial sponsors.
> I thought thats why you usually find the money giving ones "at the top"
> of our pages, in one of the sidebars, and the permanent ones "all the
> way down, whenever the content is done". (DC12, DC13. Looks like DC11
> they had an own sidebar indeed).
>
> Im not unhappy with them "being shoved down to the bottom", I'm unhappy
> with them being exiled to a "oh, we also have those over there page",
> basically communicating "we don't value it (IMO)".
OK, when I said normalize, I don't believe there was a consensus to
"hide" these sponsors, just to make sure their placement more
accurately reflect the value of the sponsorships. I think we are
potentially close to agreement.
>> I'll flip this around. If a potential sponsor or current sponsor
>> reaches out to us and asks how to get listed as a permanent sponsor,
>> what is our answer? We are planning on reaching out to a number of
>> ISPs and hosting vendors that run Debian, so I am sure it will come
>> up, and frankly we need money to pay for the conference, not more VMs.
>
> My answer is that, if you can, you please get us some money. But if you
> say outright you can or will not (like just happened), and we have a
> need, then I am more than happy to take a permanent sponsor, instead of
> nothing.
I think their are two problems here (I list proposed resolutions as well):
1) At least to my American eyes the term "Permanent sponsors" seems to imply
they these are our "best" sponsors, and many potential sponsors would very much
like to be designated as such. I think we could resolve this by
categorizing these
sponsors into a more descriptive categories, e.g.
Hosting/Infrastructure sponsors,
media sponsors and such.
2) At least on debconf13.debconf.org, these sponsors currently take up
more screen real estate and are featured in a more centrally located
position. IE: They are front and center while the financial sponsors
are sidebarred. This point I think we can address by sidebarring all
sponsors with the following ranked tiers:
- Platinum
- Gold
- Silver
- Bronze
- Infrastructure
- Media
- Logistics (not sure the exact right term for SPI and FFIS)
This still leaves the issue on www.debconf.org, where no financial
sponsors are listed, even though some have probably given us upwards
of 6-figure cumulative donations over the years. Would it be too much
work to replicate the above changes to the main DebConf site? (Or some
variant?)
I think we might still want to leave open the option to put
Infastructure/Media sponsors into "Metal" tiers as well, if their
equivalent annual value was deemed equal to what the financial
sponsors were providing. (And if they fall short perhaps we can give
them the option to pay the difference to get benefits of a higher
sponsorship level?)
> Also, with the machines we currently have, we do have enough permanent
> sponsors, so the next such offer, *currently* wouldn't be taken.
I'll bet if we put out the word we could get close to 100 companies
interested in becoming hosting sponsors, under the current placement
and "Permanent" naming we are providing.
Am I missing something? Can we find a common ground?
Thanks,
Brian
> --
> bye, Joerg
> Kids, kids. I’m not going to die. That only happens to bad people.
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