Re: Finding sponsors for Debian

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

Hi Stefano,

On Montag, 12. März 2012, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> (Note/reminder: we have resolved last year that DebConf budget is part
> of Debian budget, it is just earmarked differently for a time period
> centered around the conference.)

IIRC you still need to reply to a mail I sent to leader@ about this, where I 
question this or maybe parts of it :-) Let me summarize:

If DebConf goes well, this modell works nicely. 

But if it goes really bad (not just a little), because the DebConf orga team 
made some stupid decissions, bad mistakes, etc. I dont think Debian as a whole 
should be liable for eg 100k€ losses. (As much as I dont want the individuals 
/ the specific debconfX NGO to be in that debt for this, I do think if they 
mess it up, they have to pay the bill.)

Comments how to fix properly are very welcome. Maybe it just needs some 
cleaner wordings ;-) 
Because probably most of this is already covered: _if_ $DebConf-Orga-person 
does something out of gross negligence, it's not Debians (or DebConfs) fault 
anyway. (ie someone drives a car (with the purpose of doing some requested 
job) for DebConf, and then drives way too fast and crashes and cause 2mio € 
damages.)

But what if we book (way too) $expensive_place now and then later have to 
cancel this (and pay a huge cancelation fee) or have to take it, despite not 
having the money...

Contracts/agreements are usually not needed if things go well, only if they 
don't. I'm not sure we have good enough agreement (for the D/DC releationship) 
for when^wif things go horrible wrong.

I havent finished thinking about this, but still wanted to bring this up on 
the table now.

> DebConf travel sponsoring dominates our overall travel sponsoring costs,
> so it makes sense to go knocking at companies door yearly as part of
> DebConf organization. I don't think it would be useful to do so more
> than once per year. Companies would feel split among the different calls
> for donations and they would hardly give more. The DPL being already
> part of the effort, I don't see margin of improvement on that front
> either.

we need to ask for money *way* earlier. Starting now (for the conf happening 
this year), is about 6 months too late. 

(Also, but not only, because many companies donate money at the end of the 
year...)
 
> What *would* help is to have more people participate in the yearly
> initiatives of the DebConf sponsor team.
> Coincidentally, this is
> precisely the time of the year where DebConf people are working on
> gathering sponsor. I hereby encourage anyone interested in this topic to
> volunteer as a member of the DebConf sponsor team. It's easy, there is
> plenty of easy coordination/bookkeeping work, and every company contact
> you have could help.

Amen! (Please join!)
 

cheers,
	Holger