[CREATE] Pitching a community-funded conference

[Daniel James]

Hi Dave,

> I've been pitching this as "we need $20,000 to guarantee the
> minimum, or we can't run the conference".

I don't think that's a very attractive position for a potential sponsor. 
They want to be associated with success, not potential failure. How 
about this for a pitch?

"This is the world's most important event for graphics software on the 
fastest growing desktop platform."

Please mail me offlist if you would like some ideas/contacts to try.

Also, a very easy kind of individual sponsorship is for attendees to get 
a magazine/newspaper commission to write about the event. This has the 
double benefit of improving post-event publicity.

You also need involvement from the local and national Polish/central 
European IT media, as soon as possible (due to monthly magazine print 
schedules) e.g. http://www.linux-magazine.pl/ which is owned by the 
German company Linux New Media AG.

Cheers!

Daniel