[LRUG] Meeting sponsorship

[Jon Lim]

Muz,

What how much money are they talking about per month?

Cheers,
Jon

On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 20:07, Murray Steele <murray.steele at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> I'm sure that most of you will be aware that in recent months the meetings
> have been selling out and we've had to have waiting lists and last minute
> swapsies.  This happens because the rooms that Skills Matter have in their
> offices can only take 60-70 folk.  Given enough notice Skills Matter can
> book an alternative venue, which is why I've been trying to get the
> registration links for future meetings out there well in advance (speaking
> of which the June meeting reg link is here:
> http://skillsmatter.com/events/ajax-ria/lrug-june/).
>
> However, these larger rooms aren't free and until now Skills Matter have
> been footing the bill.  They've asked me if there's anyone out there that
> would be willing to sponsor the meetings to help them out with the cost.  I
> have to say that I don't think this is an unreasonable request, Skills
> Matter do a lot for us already for free and shelling out for an extra room
> isn't going to give them much of an extra benefit.
>
> Obviously we could approach large companies involved with Ruby like Sun or
> Thoughtworks, but I wonder if we can get the local ruby community to support
> it's user group directly.  Could some of you approach your bosses (or if you
> are the bosses, approach your finances) and see if there's any way your
> company could sponsor a meeting?  We'll need to work out exactly what we are
> willing to give these sponsors, logo and links on LRUG meeting pages is an
> obvious, but what else?).
>
> Another solution is to look for another regular venue, but as I said Skills
> Matter do a lot more than just provide the chairs, so we'd be turning our
> back on all that if we move on.  Any other venue would have to accommodate
> ~150 attendees (apparently we had 140 registrations for the last meeting, so
> this isn't such a far out figure), have a data projector, have wifi, and
> ideally be close to a pub large enough to cope with an influx of a hundred
> or so rubyists.
>
> The other solution is to not bother with sponsorship at all.  This would
> mean that we'd be faced with an artificial limit on how many rubyists can
> attend the main meeting and I worry that this might fragment the community,
> or make it seem non-inclusive.  Given the current stuff going on in the ruby
> / rails community in that area it seems like it would be a bad thing.
>
> I'm not hugely in favour of the last 2 and would prefer getting sponsors
> from local ruby companies if we can.  That said, there might be other things
> I've not thought of, so let's put our thinking caps on.
>
> If anyone is up for sponsoring a meeting get in touch with me directly and
> I'll give you an idea of the total cost and put you in touch with Skills
> Matter to work out contributions.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Muz
>
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>



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