[Yapc-na-organizers] Tasks

[Jeremy Fluhmann]

On Mon 9/18/2006 1:03 PM, Joshua McAdams wrote:
> Some companies liked the large document with sponsorable items and
> others were happy to just have the quick summary of what they get for
> how much :)  In retrospect, managing a mix of 'item' sponsors and
> general cash sponsors was kind of a headache.  It would have been much
> easier for me to just to work with the cash levels to begin with and
> only have item-specific sponsorships at the sponsor's request.  Still,
> having a banquet sponsor or, as the Pittsburgh Perl Workshop seems to
> have done, room sponsors, might be workable.  I would stop there and
> take general cash sponsorship for everything beyond those few
> big-ticket items.
 
I never thought about breaking venue sponsorship up into pieces, such as allowing sponsorship of individual rooms.  That's a great idea!  Sponsors could offer to sponsor all or part of a room and have their name(s) listed next to the room(s),  or something.  It would be eaiser to get a company to pay for all or part of a room and have thier name displayed/associated with the room in someway rather than asking for sponsorship of the venue as a whole.
 
> Beyond that, the job fair was a big hit.  I talked to a recruiter at a
> company that I worked for and asked what a reasonable price would be
> for entrance in the fair.  They said that $500 was a price that would
> be hard to say no to, so that was the number that I went with for
> entrance to the job fair.  Of course, for smaller companies I reduced
> the price, but $500 was a good starting point that wouldn't get an
> immediate no.
 
I thought the job fair was a great idea at this year's YAPC.  As far as I could tell, it seemed well received.  I'm definitely hoping to do it for 2007.
 
> Another good source of income was the post-YAPC classes.  I would
> definitely encourage doing these again.  There are tons of good and
> recognized instructors that are very willing to help out (and make
> some extra cash).  $200/student paid for the rooms for the classes,
> made YAPC $5,000, and paid out $12,000 to the instructors.
 
I've already contacted Damian and brian (Randal has scheduling conflicts with both possible dates for YAPC), and both seem willing to do it again.  
 
> One thing we did instead was 'company-passes'.  Basically, a local
> company could purchase x-seats at the conference and could have that
> number of employees in sessions at any given time.  Of course, we
> didn't police it closely, so it might have been abused.  Still, it got
> us out of giving away passes and made the companies feel better.  If I
> remember correctly, we even did this for some companies that didn't
> sponsor us.  Basically, they couldn't have their entire department out
> for three days and couldn't justify buying passes for people to only
> attend a hand-full of sessions.  Having a seat reserved allowed them
> to rotate employees going to the conference and made financial sense
> enough that they bought the passes.
 
I like the 'company-passes' idea.  I could see possibly announcing this towards the end of registration to attract some last minute attendees.  I could also see working something out for the auction dinner to try and bring all of the 'rotating employees' to the dinner and hopefully generate more money for TPF.
 
Thanks Josh!
 
Jeremy
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