[LRUG] Meeting sponsorship

[David Salgado]

What he said.

2009/5/7 Roland Swingler <roland.swingler at gmail.com>:
> 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
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Chat mailing list
>>> Chat at lists.lrug.org
>>> http://lists.lrug.org/listinfo.cgi/chat-lrug.org
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> http://snowblink.co.uk/
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