[LRUG] Meeting sponsorship

[Roland Swingler]

The phpLondon group used to charge for attendance to help cover the
cost of the room - it wasn't strongly enforced, so it was more along
the lines of "if you turn up every month and get something out of
this, help us fund it" - no one minded if you didn't pay anything if
you were just finding out what the group was like.

It wasn't a lot per-person - around a pound or two, but it helped
cover the costs. I don't know if something like that would be worth
considering - I wouldn't mind paying what amounts to less than the
cost of a pint to attend.

Cheers,
Roland

On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 8:33 PM, Jon Lim <snowblink at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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