On 12.09.2018 15:24, Daniel Lange wrote:
Hi Helen, Am 12.09.2018 um 14:45 schrieb Helen Koike:Usually in Brazil, when a company sponsors an event, they usually get a talk slot too.[..]So we were wondering: If (and only if) a sponsoring company request explicitly for a talk slot, would it be ok to say yes if it follow requirements are met? : [..]We've done talk slots for sponsors before. On the conditions you mentioned (i.e. they need to be about a FLOSS contribution, relevant to the attendees and not advertising) that was deemed o.k. in the past.
Yes, in past it was allowed for platinum sponsors. But either the talk is good, so sponsorship do no affect the selection, or we should not accept the talk. So at the end it was not useful (and contrary of what we wrote in final reports).
Note: sometimes we see slide templates with company names (not necessary a sponsors), or just a thank you final slide, for sponsoring the attendance of the speaker (usually a DFD), (possibly not a DebConf sponsors)
- The sponsor must be tier bronze or higherBronze is really low, we did this for Gold or Platinum in the past. You'd have ~25 or so potential talks otherwise, that's ... a lot.
Here we are discussing just for Open Day, so we do not need high level, OTOH there are not many slots.
In any case, OpenDay format is mostly choose by local team. So you should check within your team, how many slots there are, how many slot you can give to sponsors (I would do so, give a limit, and than the highest sponsor have priority).
Note: often OpenDay were a delusion: few attendees for the effort: it is a totally other conference (language, so attendees and speakers, but also logistically and publicity is totally different). So often it is difficult to find resource to make the event well know and with many attendees (DebConf attendees will not participate because of language, topic, arrival, tourism). So sponsors could also not be happy.
But you will know better, if such effort is necessary to get a balanced budget (expectation of local sponsors), and in this case you should find a good formula. Open day -> local sponsor, so possibly there is less pressure about having too many talks.
ciao cate