[tpm] how did you arrange a damian visit?

Sun Mar 6 11:26:51 PST 2011

Hi Uri,

I have been the main organizer for Damian in those years when he has come to
Toronto.  I'll give you my impressions of what I did that made those trips
work out.

It was easier back in the years when he would come to N. America for
YAPC::NA, because then he'd hang around *somewhere* on the continent to wait
until OSCON.  His time was relatively cheap, so gathering together enough in
personal donations to pay for his trip (within N.America), hotel for a few
days, and incidentals (meals, etc.) wasn't too hard.  Maybe $1500 would do
it for a 3-4 day long trip.  I found that the Toronto Perl Mongers were
incredibly generous to donate much, and donate it quickly.  I would collect
the money usually as cash, either at TPM meetings in the months leading up
to Damian's visit or actually at his talk sessions.  Any money donated
beyond the minimum amount needed to pay the expenses of his trip was given
to him as an honorarium for his talks.  (He never requested or required it,
but it was obviously the first-best thing we could have done with the
surplusses.)  My calls-for-donations would include this information,
including what was to be done with surplusses, and I would issue a receipt
for any donation I received.   (Sometimes this didn't happen, because at any
given Damian-talk event a bunch of people would just run up to me, stuff a
$20 in my hand, and then run away (even as I yelled after them that I wanted
to give them a receipt)).  I also provided Damian with a list of all donors
+ their email addresses, as he wanted to send them off personal thanks
afterwards.

Mix of personal vs. corporation donations -->  I would say that it leaned
very heavily to personal donations.  In fact, it was 100% personal... except
to the extent that some individual Toronto Mongers would operate as their
own corporations when making donations.  Perhaps I could have solicited
donations from Bigger Companies, but it was never necessary to do so in
order to get Damian's budget covered.  Like I said before, $1500 was always
pretty easy to get in individual donations from Toronto Mongers.

Things became more difficult once he stopped coming to N. America for
YAPC::NA.  This is because his now-squeezed travel itineary meant there was
only about 4 weeks between OSCON and YAPC::EU, and so almost all of those
weeks he would have corporate training engagements, either in N. America or
in Europe.  That made fitting "side trips" into his schedule almost
impossible.  So, my approach at that point was to network around in Toronto
to see if I could find a company that was willing to *be* one of those
corporate training gigs for Damian.  Sometimes it would work, sometimes it
wouldn't.  If it worked then Damian would travel to Toronto for the
corporate training engagement, and either stay a few extra days (over a
weekend probably) to provide a free public talk or two, or he would do a
public talk in the evening following a corporate training day.

So in one sense this made things easier, as the budget required for Damian
was lowered -- the corporate training gig would pay for the airfare and
hotel on the nights of training days.  But there was still a hotel, meals,
etc. budget needed for whatever extra days Damian would be in town.  But the
extra work I had to go through to find corporate training for him was *much*
harder than the effort involved in soliciting donations from the
ever-ultra-generous Mongers.

So...

If you can find him corporate training opportunities, that will almost
guarantee his being able to come to Boston to give some public talks too.
:-)  Otherwise, you're at the mercy of his training schedule, and
donations-from-Mongers, while necessary, possibly won't be sufficient to get
a trip out of him.

I hope this is helpful insight.  If there are other questions I can answer
please ask away.

Cheers,
- Richard

On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 12:53 PM, alexmac131 at hotmail.com <
alexmac131 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> put me down for donation call if you want to bring him here. will toss in
> 300
>
> Sent from the Viking 2 Lander
>
>
> On 2011-03-06, at 10:10 AM, Tom Legrady <legrady at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> If he comes as close as Boston, can we get him to Toronto? I's been years
>
> On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 1:35 AM, Uri Guttman < <uri at stemsystems.com>
> uri at stemsystems.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> hi all,
>>
>> i know in the past you brought damian conway to toronto by collecting
>> funds to cover a side trip there during his NA tour. i would like to
>> organize a similar thing for boston so i would like some info on how you
>> did it. what was the budget for the visit? how did you collect the
>> money? what was the mix from companies vs individuals? any other info
>> you can send me would be great. we have had damian talk in boston before
>> but that was always when he was already in town doing training. this
>> would be our first time trying to get him to make a side trip.
>>
>> thanx,
>>
>> uri
>>
>> --
>> Uri Guttman  ------   <uri at stemsystems.com>uri at stemsystems.com  --------
>>   <http://www.sysarch.com>http://www.sysarch.com --
>> -----  Perl Code Review , Architecture, Development, Training, Support
>> ------
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>> http://bestfriendscocoa.com ---------
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