Giacomo Catenazzi dijo [Wed, Sep 12, 2018 at 03:43:16PM +0200]: > > > 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). Yes, it has been done for the main conference, but platinum-level only. And in many other years, it has not been done at all. We have even rejected multiple submissions from a platinum sponsor because they just didn't match either the quality or the interest of our conference. We as Debian are very happy and thankful for DebConf sponsors. But my quite strong opinion as a person who has been part or led the Content Team for many years is that no sponsor should _dictate_ what we should have on program. Sponsors should strive to produce talks that are _interesting_ to Debian. Of course, we will evaluate it on equal footing to the other received talks. If a talk proposal is good, it will most probably be accepted. > > > - The sponsor must be tier bronze or higher > > > > Bronze 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. If this is OpenDay, I don't have much of a say. OpenDay is not DebConf. OpenDay is a parallel conference that shares our venue and some (usually, few) of our speakers and attendees. But since several years, it is *not* done by the Content Team. > 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). Completely right. > 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. And this is completely right as well. I said this to (a good chunk of) the Brazilian orga team, and am happy to be quoted in public: My opinion is we should not waste our time with OpenDay. Over the years it has meant a _lot_ of spent work, and it has _very seldom_ had much impact. Of course, you are completely entitled to make an OpenDay. And you can set your talk selection criteria; my thoughts expressed here are merely my own and in no way official :-]
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature