Support Drupal: Sponsor Drupalcon Szeged
Update, August 20: After some more sponsors have come forward (thank you!), Drupalcon Szeged now needs about €10,000 of new sponsorship to meet costs.
Looking for a way to show your support for Drupal? Easy: sponsor the upcoming European Drupalcon. You'll be helping to fund critically important work--and increasing your exposure and profile in the community at the same time.
Drupalcon sponsorship: mainstay of the Drupal Association
Drupalcon is the single largest source of revenue for the Drupal Association, the non-profit that supports Drupal. Sponsorship revenues make it possible for us to tackle key Association priorities, from protecting the legal integrity of the Drupal codebase to improving the infrastructure driving drupal.org.
Revenue from past Drupalcons is directly funding pressing projects like our top priority this year: improving the drupal.org website. Sponsoring Drupalcon is a direct and concrete way to financially support the Association's work.
Profile and Benefits
Sponsoring Drupalcon is not just a way to support important work promoting the Drupal platform. It's also an opportunity for exposure and profile in the Drupal community.
The registration list for Drupalcon Szeged already includes top talent in the Drupal development community as well as many up and coming adopters, coders, and contributors.
The sponsorship packages are designed to get your company's name out there, even if you can't attend the conference yourself. If you can attend, you'll have direct opportunities to meet and connect with the cream of the Drupal community.
If you're ever in need of Drupal talent, or if you need to connect and collaborate with other Drupal players, extra connections and profile can't hurt.
Company sponsors
Does your company or organization rely on Drupal? Do you ever find yourself saying, "I wish there was a way we could give back and secure our investment in Drupal by helping make sure the Drupal platform continues to grow and thrive?"
There is. Sponsor Drupalcon.
Drupalcon itself plays a key role in promoting and expanding the Drupal platform. It brings together Drupal talent to tackle key problems with the effectiveness that only face to face meetings can provide. It renews the Drupal talent pool by bringing whole new contingents of Drupal users and contributors quickly up to speed.
Glance through the program. You'll find sessions that tackle pretty much all the priority problems and areas in Drupal development and expansion. If your company relies on Drupal, you need Drupalcon Szeged.
Individual sponsors
As well as the company sponsorship packages, there are also individual sponsorships. Do you make your living with Drupal? Do you want a chance get recognition and give back--as a business expense? Consider signing up as an individual sponsor. Ditto for companies. If for whatever reason your company can't swing a sponsorship package, consider an individual sponsorship as a fallback. It all adds up.
The low down on Szeged finances
The Drupalcon Szeged organizers put together valuable institutional and media partnerships, keeping overall prices down, particularly for the facility.
Drupalcon attendance fees are kept purposely low to encourage the broadest participation. That means we rely mainly on sponsorships to cover costs and generate revenue.
And so far we don't have enough sponsorships even to cover the costs. As things stand, the Drupal Association could be out as much as €17,000.
All of which is to say: if you haven't yet talked to your company about sponsoring Drupalcon Szeged, now's the time. Sponsorship packages start at €1,000. If you've pegged your future on Drupal, it's a sensible investment.
Suggestion
Have you considered listing the packages in currencies other than euros? It might help if you're looking for international sponsors.
Also, a €1,000 minimum really limits your ability to take advantage of the long tail effect.
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John Forsythe
Need reliable Drupal hosting?
Individual sponsorships
As mentioned, there are also individual sponsorships: http://szeged2008.drupalcon.org/node/1278
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The future is Bryght at Raincity Studios
Info?
Maybe I'm missing it, but I don't see any information about individual sponsorship on the sponsor page. There should be a big paragraph describing the process to become an individual sponsor, along with the benefits/costs, etc. The word "individual" doesn't even appear on the packages list.
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John Forsythe
Drupal Modules - Find the module you need for your project!
A bit hidden indeed
The first items in the packages are described as "Included in package (also sold separately)".
So if I understand correctly, you could for example buy an "I supported Drupalcon Szeged" t-shirt for 200€.
But where do you buy it?
I keep looking around, and I don't see it. I'm curious about possibly buying one, but I can't figure out how...
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-john
added
Thanks for the feedback, updated http://szeged2008.drupalcon.org/sponsors/packages
The right url for that is
The right url for that is http://szeged2008.drupalcon.org/sponsors which shows some missing tabs in the previous url.
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Robert Garrigos
Professional site: http://garrigos.cat
Catalan Drupal Users Group: drupal.cat
We have to say thumbs up for
We have to say thumbs up for the sponsor. But mostly to all the volonteers out there who are working on drupal!!
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Quality Drupal Hosting
Are the costs of putting on
Are the costs of putting on the Drupalcon public information, ie. what is over €17,000 being spent on?
Also
interested in this.
EUR 17,000
EUR 17,000 is the amount the Association might loose if we don't fill in that gap of sponsorships. The Drupalcon Szeged budget structure looks very much like that of Boston http://boston2008.drupalcon.org/drupalcon-budget except that we made it possible to make the conference considerably cheaper here.
down to 10k
so please stand up and donate some money. if 500 people donate 20 euros we are there!
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groets
bert boerland
I agree...
500 x 20 euro. I will definitely donate 20 euro. No need for "I support DrupalCon" T-Shirt even.
Just for a receipt :-)
yes that would be
yes that would be interesting to know, usually the reasons for these conventions have more to do with making money then it does bringing community together. It's no secret that the people behind these events stand to make quite a bit of profit in their pocket. I think it should be public knowledge where all the costs go.
The Drupal Association
The "people" in this case is the Drupal Association. And yep, we made a profit. Which we are plowing into a re design of Drupal.org, keeping the servers running and Drupal.org up, and so on.
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The future is Bryght at Raincity Studios
who is making the profit?
The organizers are all volunteers (eg. Kristof Van Tomme or me or others working on the conference). We are pouring in months of work, and not making any money for ourselves. Not only that we don't make a profit for ourselves, all our work is pro bono, and is not paid.
Our contract with the Drupal Association expressly includes, that any profit we might make will go back to the Drupal Association. In turn, the Drupal Association spends money on improving drupal.org, keeping up the infrastructure, marketing the system, protecting the trademark, and so on. As it stands now, we are NOT making a profit even for the Drupal Association. The above call is to get us to the point where we break even, and not loose the Drupal Association any money.
It is not clear how you've expected or thought it would be obvious to make huge money out of a conference where the entrance fee does not even cover your food and drinks we give you on all four days. We need sponsors to make up for the rest, or we'd go bankrupt.
The Boston Drupalcon budget breakdown was published at http://boston2008.drupalcon.org/drupalcon-budget and I'd be happy to publish the Drupalcon Szeged budget breakdown later once we close the books. We are constantly adjusting our budget to attendee numbers as they evolve and trying to lower costs to get closer to what money we have in the bank.
loves come back to you
and hence, the Drupal Association will also take the loss if there is any with organising a con. since the Drupal Association is in fact the financial backbone of the Drupal community, it makes sense to donate some money on the spot or buy a cool shirt; love comes back to you!
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groets
bert boerland
publicized
We publicized the overall breakdown of what we spent money on for this Drupalcon (following what was done in Boston). We spent 70.000 EUR to get together this event. Check out the pie charts in the closing keynote for more info. http://szeged2008.drupalcon.org/program/sessions/closing-remarks
about sponsors
i think being sponsor of drupal is very wisely... 1.000 is not too much. good luck for sponsors
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5001
Long Tail Individual Sponsorship
Yep I can see that running a conference like this takes loads of money, time and effort. The more I see the community in action the more I recognize that I need to contribute. So when I read the article about needing more sponsorship I felt obliged to donate as an individual sponsor. It's going to be a win/win situation for everyone.
Digby
It looks like a lot of North
It looks like a lot of North America companies that sponsored Drupal Con are not sponsoring Drupalcon Szeged. I have a feeling that not that many North American companies are going to Drupalcon Szeged because of the cost (like us).
That's not such a bad price
That's not such a bad price really.
Too
For me it's too much
You have to put it in
You have to put it in perspective. Is the price high generally speaking? Yea, sorta. But, Drupal has saved some people 1000's or even 10's of thousands of dollars in dev costs.
If you're some business or website owner that has saves $1000's of dollars because of Drupal, all the sudden this fee doesn't really seem all that high.
The point is to give what you
The point is to give what you can, nothing more and nothing less ya know...
1000?
Why minimal 1000 - it's too much for free software.