Prospectus and Sponsorship Documents for FUDCon Tempe 2011

[Paul W. Frields]

On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 07:59:17AM -0600, Clint Savage wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 6:46 AM, Paul W. Frields <stickster at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 07, 2010 at 02:40:43PM -0600, Clint Savage wrote:
> >> As promised, I am sending an email with a couple requests for
> >> information regarding both venue and operational information and
> >> corporate sponsorships for FUDCon Tempe 2011
> >>
> >> I've created both the prospectus[0] and sponsorship[1] documents on
> >> the wiki and provided links below.  In addition, I've written a short
> >> description of the goals of both of these documents on the logistics
> >> page[2].  However, I'll include those descriptions here for clarity.
> >>
> >> Prospectus
> >>
> >> The goal of the prospectus document is to provide a sense of the
> >> conference to potential sponsors and vendors who might be providing
> >> services. This allows them to see if the conference is something that
> >> fits in line with their normal vision of what they sponsor. This
> >> document also provides information about the event, venue, number and
> >> type of people who attend the conference.
> >>
> >> Sponsorship
> >>
> >> The goal of the sponsorship document is to provide a basic set of
> >> sponsorships available at FUDCon Tempe 2011. However, these are just
> >> guidelines and if a sponsor wishes to provide services not listed,
> >> other sponsorships can and should be accommodated. The representative
> >> should use their best judgment to cover the needs of the conference
> >> first and the sponsors interest second.
> >>
> >> The focus of these documents is *not* to provide granular detail, but
> >> rather to help the potential sponsor(s) with making decisions.  We
> >> want them to sponsor our conference, not read a dissertation on why
> >> FUDCon is awesome.  I've done a bit of that here, but am hoping we can
> >> have a more focused statements as I've written in the documents below.
> >>
> >> I'd like to get the documents complete before our next meeting so if
> >> you could make edits or comment to this thread, it would be much
> >> appreciated.
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >>
> >> Clint
> >>
> >> 0 - https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Tempe_2011_prospectus
> >> 1 - https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Tempe_2011_sponsorships
> >> 2 - https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Tempe_2011_logistics
> >
> > Thanks Clint -- Sorry this reply is late, I got quite behind due to
> > OLF.  Some points:
> >
> > * There's a section on "Focus" for the event.  This isn't something
> >  I've seen at most FUDCons, simply because different groups attending
> >  have different focus areas.  People gathering for infrastructure
> >  work focus on that area; Ambassadors focus on how to more
> >  efficiently move swag, promote at events, and so forth.  Is it OK to
> >  remove this?
> 
> Focus is one way that sponsors know what we do a FUDCon.  It's more
> about generalization than what you are asking.  In my opinion, it can
> be removed for now, but it is used to portray to the sponsors the
> value that we provide by creating and distributing Fedora, helping the
> community, providing and organizing swag etc.  If I were to write the
> Focus, it'd be something like 'FUDCon allows the Fedora community to
> join together to build the best of breed Linux distribution through
> development, community and many other projects'.

What if we laid out a few bullet points discussing some major topics
that we expect will be covered at FUDCon?  Here are some examples that
come to mind.  (Not all are finalized, but in the works.)

* Discussing future architecture of the tools that allow anyone to
  create remixes of Fedora software and software from other compatible
  repositories

* Offering basic legal education regarding software development, such
  as intellectual property issues like copyright, patents, and
  trademarks, and how these issues intersect with free and open source
  software development

* Creating opportunities for successful, grassroots, free software
  events by demonstrating the tools used by FUDCon planners to handle
  our events worldwide

Is this in scope for what you were thinking?

> > * I think it makes sense to combine the prospectus and sponsorships
> >  documents -- they're both pretty short and making people backtrack
> >  to get details seems unnecessary.
> 
> The prospectus and sponsorship documents, while similar, are intended
> to be separate.  Call it a sales technique if you like, but telling
> people the focus of what we're doing and getting them sold using the
> prospectus can be useful.  However, I can see the same functionality
> by putting the pricing below the prospectus details.

It's probably a trivial detail.  I couldn't tell whether these were
intended to be combined somewhere, or stay separate here on the wiki.
If I was a potential sponsor I would want to spend as little time as
possible looking for information.  If that's not an issue, then my
critique is handled already! :-)

> > * Is the A/V sponsorship something you already have details on, or is
> >  that just an example row?
> 
> AFAIK, there is not an A/V sponsorship, but I don't see why it
> couldn't happen.  My opinion is that every conference everywhere
> should be recorded and video would be nice.  This sponsorship, while
> it might be a good example, provides some easy resources for us to
> have the presentations recorded and streamed.  I put the cost at
> $2,500 but the real cost is whatever it takes to have people come and
> record each presentation.  Hackfests could be recorded and with some
> fun editing, distilled down to what happened, but there may be no real
> value in recording these.

I too would really like to see us do this more consistently.  The
problem as always is resources.  Either we use money for this purpose
and have to push other costs off on attendees, or we need volunteers
to help handle this need.  Basically, we have a lot of people who want
it, but not enough people to do it. :-)

I have a feeling that video recordings of hackfests lose more of their
value over time than sessions, except in the context of showing the
general work that people do at a FUDCon.  And filming them well seems
much harder, too.

> > * Has the sponsorship email alias already been created, or does
> >  someone need to do that?
> 
> Needs to be created.  I just put that there as a suggested email address.

Who would the email go to?  Once we know that it's easy for anyone to
make a request from Infrastructure (I'm happy to do it).  I'd propose
that we have that forward to fpl at fp.o which currently goes to Jared
(and me as backup).

We don't want to unnecessarily have those emails go to a public list
where they might be unwanted, as in the case where a sponsor backs
out.  But they need to definitely wind up in the boxes of some people
accountable for handling them.  What do you think?

> Paul,
> 
> See my comments inline.  My opinions above are from experience running
> a user conference and my knowledge of FUDCon and how it fits with
> sponsorships.  I like where this discussion is going and definitely
> think we could have a good document pretty quickly.

Agreed -- awesome responses and I hope the above is helpful in the
back-and-forth.  I'd like to get these docs finished in the next few
days so they're ready when Robyn gets in touch with Cat, John with
someone at GoDaddy, and so on.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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