Re: [Debconf-team] Sponsored lanyards, a proposal
On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 11:19:32AM +0100, martin f krafft wrote:
> A reply to everyone, not Marga, but in this context:
>
> also sprach Margarita Manterola <margamanterola@gmail.com> [2014-11-26 09:50 +0100]:
> > This last part was not agreed and is not a decision to be taken by
> > the fundraising team. If we are not getting them "for free", I'd
> > rather we sponsored more people than spend money earned through
> > the hard work of the fundraising team on making the official
> > lanyards.
>
> Note that the sponsor would have possibly given us *more* money on
> top for the logo placement, which would have allowed us to support
> more attendees in addition to the money saved (one travel from the
> US, or four people sponsored for the entire week). That sounds
> (sounded) like a win-win situation to me. However, during the
> meeting it was stated that sponsoring extra people was not
> a justification. Wtf?
>
> The first of our primary DebConf goals is to enable face-to-face
> interactions, and not "minimise attendee exposure to sponsor logos".
> It had been my understanding that the main job of the fundraising
> team was to acquire the means to extend this goal to as many people
> as possible including those who could themselves never afford to
> attend. This is what motivated me so far, and what gave rise to all
> my ideas how we could take in more money.
>
> I find it baffling how some people categorically opposed the
> sponsored lanyards now without even bothering to find out more, e.g.
> the size of the logo. Have you considered that those of us involved
> had already made sure that we weren't proposing brightly coloured
> Ubuntu lanyards or huge sponsor logos with tiny "DebConf" text
> between, by the time we (had to) discuss the idea in public?
>
> Had we just gone ahead, I am fairly certain that noone would have
> noticed the logo or we could have contained any complaints fairly
> easily. Instead, we flogged down the horse before it was born
> because in the past under different circumstances something not
> quite alike was tried and caused an uproar in the orga team(s) back
> then. We still had lanyards and happy attendees though…
>
> While it's great that we could always make do with
> strings-for-lanyards etc., we should also not forget that sponsors
> are going to be less likely to give us money in the future if we
> give off the impression of an ad-hoc organisation on a shoestring,
> or if they find out that even some people in the orga team are
> opposed to corporate logos infiltrating our event the way some of us
> seem to be.
>
> Apart from that, I would have loved to have had lanyards that are
> worth keeping for their functional purpose and as a memory,
> especially if they'd been produced for us and for free.
>
> But after the "team decision" (by which I really just mean another
> instance of lack of trust in the ability of others to make
> judgements), we are now either left without lanyards, or with an
> additional task to worry about and an additional position in the
> budget.
>
> Maybe those so vocally opposed could now engage actively in
> fundraising, dig up the funds, and produce those lanyards?
No, because actually lanyards are not needed.
You're assuming so many weird things about people here. Could you agree
with the decision of you own team and close this so useless subject?
--
tiago
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