Hi Sriram,
Thank you for the thoughtful reply and I apologize for the delay in getting back to you. It sounds like an interesting event and we definitely appreciate the importance of GNOME for the greater GNU/Linux project.
We are interested in supporting LAS at the $500 Supporter Level.
Can you please let me know who we should send our logo, link, and text for the conference website and entrance banner?
Can you also let me know the best way for us to pay our support
(check, PayPal, etc.)?
On Fri, Aug 12, 2016 at 3:43 PM Harris Kenny <kenny alephobjects com> wrote:
Hi Sri,
Thank you for the thorough reply and I apologize for the delay on my
end. I appreciate you outlining your vision for the conference and
long-term goals. I have two questions to help better understand if this
makes sense for us at this time.
1) Will the agenda include an emphasis or discussion about the
importance of respecting user freedom, and how that may relate to the
wider goals of the conference?
User freedom is always an important part of free software and it is hard to envision not having a discussion albeit not formal on user freedom. Since the idea is to reach out to new potential entrepreneurs, user freedom should be part of that conversation. Bradley Kuhn, president of the Software Freedom Conservancy will be attending, and can do any kind of talk regarding software freedom and of course software licensing. (Bradley is a keynote for this year's GUADEC)
2) It looks like openSUSE is the only sponsor of the event so far. How
many attendees do you anticipate at the show this year? Have you
connected with any other sponsors that may help support the event?
We actually have Codethink who has recently have become a sponsor. You should see something in the next couple of days. The reason you haven't is that we are waiting for our registration page to be updated to just donations and that has not happened unfortunately.
In addition, I hope to have some sponsorships from Yocto Project, and Intel. Both will have some attendance at LAS GNOME.
That said, we will likely take a loss this year as the GNOME Foundation sees this as an investment. Starting new conferences is quite difficult. While modest in size, we expect a conference of this nature due to its uniqueness to grow over time, as we understand how to better manage it. After all, we don't have a conference that brings user space people together.
I of course encourage you to sponsor. We will be doing some heavy promotion as soon as that registration page is fixed and of course the search for sponsors will also continue.
Let me know if you have more questions.
sri
I look forward to hearing back from you, thank you,
On 08/02/2016 08:30 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:
> Hi Kenny!
>
> Thank you so much for reaching out to us. First of all thank you for
> being a GNOME fan, we really much appreciate it. We also apologize
> for the delay in writing to you. We were waiting on an important
> approval from the GNOME Foundation regarding our sponsorship levels
> before responding.
>
> We are in the midst of changing the options for sponsorships to much
> smaller amounts. We would absolutely love to have sponsorship from
> your company. Essentially, we are looking for anything between $250 -
> $4000. The larger the better of course. We will put your logo on a
> banner at the conference and on our website. If we get enough funding
> for t-shirts we will definitely put that in there as well. If you
> give large amounts the logo gets bigger. :-) We have a target of 10k,
> although we will still take a loss. We're about 3k short of that goal
> at the moment. You can see the old sponsorship page here:
> http://las.gnome.org/sponsors/sponsorship-opportunities/
>
> Let me tell you a little bit about what the conference is about. I'm
> the organizer and LAS GNOME is my brainchild and something I wanted to
> do based on my observations on GNOME and Free Software desktops for
> the past couple of years. Primarily what this conference is about is
> to create a market channel for applications on Linux based operating
> systems. We've had a convergence of technologies that we hope will
> finally make applications easy to install, but also change how we
> distribute applications. The idea is to move away from the distro
> model or move to a hybrid model where at least larger development
> houses can distribute applications. Once you control and measure
> distribution you have some way to measure the market. We hope that
> measurement indicate growth so that companies are willing to put
> development dollars on Linux versions.
>
> The success of a linux application market will drive better tools,
> better collaboration within the Linux eco-system, and hopefully more
> participation by consumer electronics to allow more consumer devices
> to support Linux.
>
> So this conference is the first of its kind that tries to 1) develop a
> market channel 2) develop the development tools people expect 3)
> position desktops as user space engineering and an important part of
> the Linux eco-system.
>
> Finally, we hope that we can find new sources of funding for
> desktops. The GNOME branding is putting itself in the leadership
> position.
>
> Whew! That was a mouthful, you can find more at
> http://las.gnome.org/about
>
> Thank you SO much for coming to us, we are very appreciative.
>
> Best wishes,
> sri
--
Harris Kenny | Aleph Objects, Inc.
Makers of the LulzBot® line of 3D Printers
Email: kenny alephobjects com