[Yapc-na-organizers] Link to YAPC 2007 sponsorship document

[G. Wade Johnson]

On Fri, 23 Mar 2007 09:34:34 -0500 (CDT)
Pete Krawczyk <petek at bsod.net> wrote:

> Subject: Re: [Yapc-na-organizers] Link to YAPC 2007 sponsorship
> document From: Richard Dice <rdice at pobox.com>
> Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2007 09:29:18 -0400
> 
> }Re: staff a table at the job fair -- for a $100 Bronze sponsorship?
> I think }this is a waaay too low a price for a job fair table.
> 
> I will agree with this - we set a minimum of $250 in Chicago, and
> even that was a bit low, I think.  Companies will spend that much on
> a single ad in the Sunday paper - for a table at a conference with
> their prospective audience, they'll gladly pay at least that,
> especially if they get good leads out of it.

That's good to know. We'll revise this.

> I would set the individual level at $100 and the bronze level at $250.

The individual level was a bit of an in-joke, since '87 was a special
year for Perl.

> }Re: May 18th deadline - it's good to include something like this on
> the }sheet, but in a practical sense you could find yourself
> receiving (or even }soliciting) sponsorships right up to the day
> before the event.
> 
> We had a sponsor pay the day of the job fair for a table!  If you're
> going to have a deadline, make sure you put it as late as possible,
> and only phrase the deadline to indicate they can still sponsor after
> this date:
> 
>   "In order to be mentioned in our program and on the t-shirt, you
> must become a sponsor by June 1st, 2007.  However, you will still be 
>    entitled to several of the other benefits listed above."

We'll rework the text on this. I had not realized that we weren't clear
enough.

> Our t-shirts went to press with two weeks to go and our program and 
> sponsor list was sent to print six days before the conference
> started. Both were picked up the Friday before the conference
> started.  I can't speak highly enough about the company I had print
> the programs, but unfortunately, the owner retired and the company
> closed.

I'm a bit on the paranoid side. The idea of ordering the shirts with
"no" slack time makes me nervous. I could just see a call two days
before the conference saying the shirts were going to be a week
late.<shrug/>

> }Re: contact email address -- you've got the yapchouston.org
> domain... maybe }you could set yourself up an @yapchouston.org email
> address to go along with }this?
> 
> People respond much better to this, as well as to conference
> "organizers". Make sure your .sig and introductory paragraph reflect
> this.  They want to think they're dealing with the most important
> people at the conference.

I'll definitely talk with Will about this.

> }Sometimes, people want to sponsor an _aspect_ of the conference.
> 
> This is how ValueClick sponsorship came about - they sponsored
> Damian! LiveText sponsored bags, Google sponsored the T-shirts, etc.
> Companies really like it when they know exactly what their money will
> be spent on.

As I said, I was hoping to talk with each company about this
possibility, so that it's more custom than choices off a list. Maybe we
need to play up the "special sponsor" role better in the document.

Thanks for the ideas (and experience).

G. Wade