[CREATE] Pitching a community-funded conference

[Dave Neary]

Hi Joao,

Joao S. O. Bueno wrote:
> That's about US$4.000,00 per sponsor...
> I don't want to downplay the work of the people who got the sponsorships - but 
> having Google to dispay its logo proeminently in all LGM's material should 
> cost more than travel expenses for a single overseas attendant. (for example. 
> The same is valid for other high-profile sponsors, of course)
> 
> Again - I am not condemining Kamila's or anyone's else work. I am just sad for 
> the greed of the big players.

This is the kind of reaction you see from people who have never had to
go looking for money for a conference like this.

There is *no* commercial benefit to these guys. Having a logo on our
website doesn't get them anything. Google might come & collect CVs at
the conference, maybe, which might get them a couple of hires... outside
of that, these guys are giving us money for goodwill. It's philanthropy,
not a commercial argument.

To reinforce this: let's say I'm talking to a Canon guy, one of his
questions will be "how many people are coming?" I'd probably say "200".
"and you're looking for how much money?" "20,000". "Do you honestly
think we're going to get $100 extra profit per attendee at this
conference if we sponsor?" And no, of course he isn't. That would mean
everyone at the conference buying about $800 worth of Canon equipment.

We're entering a recession, at least in the US. Companies are tightening
up on their largesse goodwill budgets. They're spending money where they
can point to the bottom line. Investment returns must be measurable.
This isn't quite 100% true, but that's pretty much where we're at.

So bear that in mind when criticising - getting money for things like
this is *hard*. We could probably do it better, and get more money, if
someone spent all their time at it for 2 or 3 months, but organising
this conference is a collaborative volunteer effort, and most of us suck
at sales. My philosophy for LGM1 was "work out the budget, fundraise
until I pass the budget, then stop - there are other things to do". The
target budget was $20,000. I'm impressed that (given that our biggest
previous sponsor isn't supporting us this year) we've already raised
$13,000 this year. This money hasn't come easily.

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary
dneary at free.fr
Tel: +33 9 51 13 46 45
Cell: +33 6 77 01 92 13