Re: Application for hosting the 5th GUADEC.

[Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller <Uraeus linuxrising org>]

On Tue, 2003-06-24 at 22:01, Glynn Foster wrote:
> Hey Nils,
> 
> > Application for hosting the 5th GNOME Users and Developers Conference.
> 
> Thanks for the application! It's really great to see people thinking
> about next years conference so early. I am looking forward to it already
> [grin]
> 
> > Please indicate a budget and your experience with sponsors from earlier
> > events. We would need to use the GNOME foundations network to get in contact
> > with the right people for sponsorship contracts at big companies. What are
> > the criteria for Gold/Platinum etc sponsorship?
> 
> This year the foundation board set the target of raising 50K early in
> the year for GU4DEC and we managed to raise about 30K, which considering
> the current economic climate was a pretty excellent achievement.
> Obviously we're still trying to put together the final budget for the
> event, so things are a little uncertain as yet.
> 
> One of the major sticking points of this years conference was the high
> costs of the conference venue and network, although bandwidth was kindly
> sponsored by HEAnet - this cut significantly into our budget, and it's
> certainly something that needs to be thought out for next year.
> 
> This year we embarked on a new enterprise to encourage companies to
> sponsor the event, and get their value for their buck. This year we
> partnered a German company called 'LogOn' to produce a Linux work day,
> splitting the proceeds 50/50. Linux work is a very successful series of
> one day confererences hosted in various European cities -
> 
> 	http://www.ltt.de/linux-at-work.2002/final-report.shtml
> 
> where a number of high profile business and community speakers give
> presentations on the current Linux market. We gave sponsors the
> opportunity of buying exhibition booths for the Linux work event.
> Looking back I'm not sure how successful it was and whether it is
> something to put in mind for future years, given the extremely tough
> economic conditions. I still have to see the attendance numbers for the
> event, but I'm pretty happy with the quality of some of the sessions -
> some really interesting stuff happening, to prove that we're on the
> verge of something special.
> 
> As far as the sponsorship goes, basically the sponsorship amount is
> proportional to the amount of exposure that a sponsor receieves, in
> terms of a mention in any press releases, size of logos on website,
> posters and programs etc. While I know some details, I'd rather Leslie
> comment on this, so I don't get things wrong. This year we had a number
> of levels of sponsorship - Platinum, Gold, Supporting, Media Partners,
> Hardware Providers, Network Supporters and Association Partners. The
> Foundation can certainly help with regard sponsorship contact details -
> one of the big things that we missed out on this year was not having
> enough time to target local companies. I'm pretty sure we missed out on
> potentially quite a lot there.
> 
> > End of June is the nicest time of the year in Norway, and the best time for
> > HIA to arrange the conference. April is unfortunately impossible for us,
> > since it is just before the exam period starts, so all the theatres will
> > still be in use. In addition, the students will focus on rehearsing to the
> > exams instead of attending or helping out at GUADEC, and the teachers that
> > help out arranging GUADEC will be too busy following up the students or
> > making exams.
> 
> We also had that problem, given that the university wasn't free until
> the main bulk of the exams were over. Unfortunately this means that many
> students couldn't attend the event, which was a great pity. Given that
> we now have more time to think about the event, how possible would it be
> to organize a date to try and accommodate everyone?

I doubt it would be possibly to find a date that suits "everyone", I think we just
will have to live with that the conference moves a bit back and forth as
different people organize it. That way some people are hindered from coming some years
and other people hindered other years. Which sounds as far as it gets in my opinion.

Also a suggestion to Nils is that you contact NUUG about some sponsorship for GUADEC 
when the time comes. I have gotten some sponsorship money from them at a couple of
ocassions before when doing GNOME related stuff (since I am a Norwegian too :)

Christian