Re: Sponsorship document for GNOME.Asia 2011

[Frederic Muller <fredm gnome org>]

Dear all,

I've taken the liberty to write a different version keeping some of the 
work and changing some of our catch lines.
The text being quite different I have attached a text file (rather than 
overwriting the wiki) and would like to gather some feedback first. Note 
that everything under "The Sponsor process" in the wiki page plugs under 
my text.

Thanks a lot.

so feedback welcome...

Fred

    * March 28th - April 3rd 2011 - Bangalore, India
    * GNOME.Asia Summit 2011: GNOME 3.0 Hackfest | Launch Party 


= Welcome to the fourth edition of the GNOME.Asia Summit =
GNOME.Asia Summit is the yearly GNOME users and developers Asian conference and has been inspired by GUADEC straight from the start. After Beijing, Ho Chi Minh City and Taipei, GNOME.Asia Summit is coming to Bangalore in India, one of the software development centers of the world. The conference will take place right before the launch of the GNOME 3.0 release and feature a five days hackfest for the GNOME release, marketing and documentation teams to get together and ensure heavy testing and full coordination between the GNOME core developers. During this week Bangalore will suddenly become the worldwide center of attention of anyone interested in desktop, mobile and cloud computing integration by having some of the brightest developers within its walls.
GNOME.Asia Summit has attracted from 600 to more than a thousand visitors each year, being nominated as one of the top three Open Source conferences in China in 2008 and the biggest Open Source conference in Vietnam in 2009 by each respective government.
While each year GNOME.Asia Summit has managed to attract speakers and delegates from the whole Asian region, we foresee a much greater reach for 2011 as we are hosting an International hackfest and celebrating the release of the next generation of the GNOME desktop.

Depending on the momentum and our ability to secure sufficient funding during the few weeks before the conference we are planning for an extra conference day to provide more interactions between the GNOME developers on site and the audience.

The aim of GNOME.Asia Summit is to grow the GNOME Asian community, explain and demonstrate the great technologies that a free software project such as GNOME can bring to developers, companies and end-users and foster contribution and knowledge sharing in the region.

Join us to  make this event a success!

= The set up =
# Hackfest: March 28th - April 1st 2011
# Conference: April 2nd with a tentative 2nd conference day on April 3rd
The event comes to India this year to its very own Namma Bengaluru. Furthermore we have already secured logistic support from Intel who will be hosting the first two days of the GNOME 3.0 Release Hackfest in their Bangalore offices, and from the Dayananda Sagar Institutions who will host all subsequent sessions and the conference itself. The Dayananda Sagar Institutions campus is WiFi enabled and high on technology with eclassrooms, computers, laptops and several large computer labs. This is definitely one of the best possible environment to launch a new product and share it with the world!

= Potential Speakers = 

 * Paul Cutler (Chairman, The GNOME Foundation)
 * Brian Cameron (Director and Secretary, The GNOME Foundation)
 * Vincent Untz (GNOME Release Team)
 * Havoc Pennington (need help with description...)
 * Andre Klapper (GNOME Release Team)
 * Frederic Peters (GNOME Release Team)
 * Jason Clinton (GNOME Marketing Team)
 * Owen Taylor (GNOME Shell Maintainer)
 * Stefano Zacchiroli (Debian Project Leader)
 * Emily Chen (Director, The GNOME Foundation)
 * Pockey Lam (GNOME.Asia Committee) 

= Transparency =
An event of the size of GNOME.Asia has huge expenses involved with it and relies exclusively on volunteers for its organization and corporate sponsors for its financing. Our estimated budget for this year is about USD 60,000.- of which 66% are allocated for speakers expenses (flight and accommodation) and the remaining part for the conference itself (marketing materials, foods and beverages, logistics, etc). It is important to note that a lot of those international hackers will come on their own free time and have to travel long distances to participate in the event, while organizers and other contributors do so also during their spare time. The forecasted budget is available on demand to any interested donor or supporter of the event.

= Become a sponsor =

As explained in the above section all speaker travel, venue and infrastructure expenses are met by raising funds from sponsors. GNOME.Asia Summit is an ideal platform to promote new products, showcase your technology and meet with a demographic of developers, university students and technology specialists from all over the world. Should you be interested in reaching out to new territories, or re-enforce your presence in Asia and/or India this is also the place to advertise. Since its inception GNOME.Asia Summit has reached from 600 up to 1400 visitors each year and attracted technology companies as well as online entertainment (music and gaming) and retail organizations. This year special circumstances of the GNOME 3.0 release launch together with the International Hackfest will draw even more attention than in the past and bring the special touch that your marketing campaign was looking for. 

The summit also offers matchmaking opportunities between international and local enterprises. We are expecting more than 500 participants of the India IT elite and as a sponsor you will have the chance to meet those highly qualified people as well as entrepreneurs and business managers from the IT industry, attracting them on your booth or in the VIP section. 

Your benefits as a sponsor of the GNOME.Asia Summit:
â?¢ Meet key contributors: you get an unique opportunity to meet the core GNOME contributors, upstream maintainers and users of the world's leading desktop technology platforms from all around the world.
â?¢ Influence future product direction: this year GNOME.Asia Summit is the event where you get to see GNOME 3.0 and its technologies before everyone else, this is your chance to discuss and influence its direction.
â?¢ Meet partners, competitors and users: you have the chance to tap into a wide range of computing and information technology markets simultaneously.
â?¢ Company promotion: a sponsorship provides you with important promotional possibilities such as visible advertising, prominent talks, and international press coverage.
â?¢ Push desktop and mobile open source development: you support the production of new applications by making the GNOME 3.0 Release Hackfest possible.
â?¢ Support Free and Open Source Software: you will be recognized not only as a sponsor but also as an enabler of Free Desktop Computing!



= Long time supporters =
We would like to extend our special thanks and recognition for the organizations who have been supporting us several times since our inception and hope they will chose to support us again this year. Those are in no specific order:
- Sun/Oracle
- Nokia
- Google
- Lemote technologies
- The GNOME Foundation



= Sponsorship packages =
Sponsors gain exposure through:

    * â?¢ Conference Web site â?¢ Press announcements â?¢ Media coverage â?¢ Give-aways in delegate kits â?¢ Branding at the venue 

Please note:

    * Under no circumstances will the organizers divulge names or contact information of delegates
    * "Proportionally sized logoâ?? indicates that your logo will be in proportion to your sponsor status. Platinum Sponsor logo will always be the largest, Gold Sponsor logo will be 20% smaller, etc. 


*** insert table here ***

Custom Sponsorship

Shouldn't you be able to find a suitable sponsorship package to your company's budget or requirements, custom sponsorship packages are available. Those could include the sponsorship of
    * Lunch / Dinner
    * Launch party
    * Snacks, Tea/coffee
    * Delegate kit (t-shirt/mug/usb drive etc) which will be distributed to all participants
    * One day outing after the event
    * Hardware (e.g. computers, notebooks, mobile phones and other devices that can be used as freebies or lucky draw gifts to guests and participants.) 
Please contact us directly at asia-summit-list gnome org and tell us what you would be interested in.

Media
We welcome news publishers, online or paper, to become media partners by giving suitable coverage during the registration period which points participants to the registration page, and giving coverage during and after the conference.
Media partners will have their company logo displayed on the website sponsor page and in the conference program. Copies of your paper or magazine can be distributed to attendees.

Contact information
If you would like more information or want to discuss sponsorship opportunities, please contact us at asia-summit-list gnome org .