Find Sponsors

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I'm not sure how we should go about this, but we definitely need sponsors. Last year we added the logo to all prints and allowed some sponsors to lay out their material around registration and to give a short presentation.

What should we offer this year?
Who wants to take care of talking to possible sponsors?

[chiesax]

We may offer the same package as last year.

I guess the first step would be to contact the last year sponsors and ask them if they want to sponsor us again, letting them know we are now an association, and that they may benefit from tax exemption if they decide to give us some money. Do we have the contacts?

[chiesax]

@ccdesales, @href are Seantis and Webrepublic willing to give the association some money and eventually how much?

[href]

Do you mean soon, to get some liquidity, or in time for the conference?

[chiesax]

I do not think we need the money right now... but just to have an idea of the amount to make a reasonable budget...

[href]

Well to get the same deal as last year, which I guess would be the lowest tier of sponsoring (have the logo on the printed materials and on the website) Seantis would be willing to pay 500.- to 1000.-.

It would make sense to add a higher tier, like the one Beekeeper had last year. I don't know what they payed at the time, but it would have to be a bit more than the lowest tier of course.

So maybe add a second tier for 1500.- to 2500.- that includes a short presentation at the end like last year's as well as a booth.

If we wanted to go all out we could also add a single top-tier sponsor plan which goes for maybe 3000.- to 5000.- which might include a guaranteed speaker spot (it would still have to be something pythonic) and maybe the ability to send a single message through us to all the attendees. That is a mass-email that they can send from our address to everyone that attended. Apparently that's something quite valuable :)

This would mainly be interesting as an anchor point, it would make the second tier look more affordable, because there's a third tier that's more expensive. In the end we might not even need the third tier.

In any case, we would have to limit the spots of those tiers.

We should also have someone pay for the after party. Maybe as part of the third tier, or independently. Anyway, those are the thoughts of my co-workers :)

[href]

By the way, it doesn't look like there's a tax credit to be had at this point. I think we would have to become a specific kind of registered association for this to work:

http://www.viavia.ch/verein/pmwiki.php?n=Verein.Steuerbefreiung

But I doubt this is much of an issue anyway, when a company spends more money on things it pays less taxes as the profits are affected. And what really counts is what we offer anyway. So our main argument and focus should be on the conference being an even bigger deal this year with many engineers attending. Those engineers won't stay with their current job forever, so increasing your companies profile with those engineers is easily worth what we're asking.

[chiesax]

Ok great news and thanks to Seantis, this will already cover part of the location fees. So if we can get the same from Webrepublic, we have already payed the venue.

[dbrgn]

If we wanted to go all out we could also add a single top-tier sponsor plan which goes for maybe 3000.- to 5000.- which might include a guaranteed speaker spot

I would not agree on "selling" a speaking spot. People pay an entrance fee to see interesting content, not the one that brings us the most money.

Allowing the bigger sponsors to send out a mass e-mail would be OK for me.

[chiesax]

Sponsors may also pay for a stand...

[chiesax]

I am also somewhat against selling speaking spots, but OK for the rest.

[chiesax]

We should also definitely have a 'become a sponsor' section on the web site...

[ccdesales]

I'm also in favor of company tickets.

We could come up with some sponsor packages (free tickets for instance), but I'm not particularly in favor of giving too much power on deciding the conference program.

[href]

I'm okay with company tickets, but they need to register anyway, so they don't end up unused.

[href]

Without going into pricing yet, this is what I currently have in mind. Let me know what you think.

Platinum (one spot)

• Has the logo placed on all promotional materials (large size)
• May send one mass-email to all attendees through us (no sharing of addresses)
• Gets a 5 minute spot at the end of the conference to have a short presentation
• Gets the best booth spot
• Gets five company tickets
• Gets to be sponsor of the afterparty (no additional charge)

Gold (two spots)

• Has the logo placed on all promotional materials (medium size)
• Gets the ability to have a booth spot
• Gets three company tickets

Silver (three spots)

• Has the logo placed on all promotional materials (small size)

[Edit]
The number of six sponsors is mainly chosen because more than that is going to be hard to fit onto posters and stuff. I also added the afterparty info to Platinum.

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I'm however still unclear on how to add the t-shirt / lanyard sponsoring of last year into these tiers.