Skip to main content

PyCon US 2013 Sponsorship - Why it matters, and why we need more.

Image
Posted by

PyCon is a lot of things. It’s the largest Python conference around in many aspects, with more talks, more tutorials, more days, and more people than any others. It’s one of the cheapest big conferences around, with ticket prices that haven’t changed in years. It’s the largest gathering of the best minds in the community. With the conference back in Silicon Valley for a second year and an expanded capacity of 2500 attendees, you will not find a bigger gathering of the best Python users around.

We’ve had people consider PyCon their vacation. We’ve had people in attendance from all around the world. We’ve had people bring their kids. We’ve had people try to buy next year’s tickets before the current conference was over. This community loves PyCon, and we love working on it.

What we need is more sponsorship.

What does the community get out of sponsorship?

Financial Aid

PyCon prides itself on being an affordable event for attendees starting with the low ticket prices, and extending this further by offering early bird discounts. However, the conference ticket is just one of the expenses an attendee will face. Many attendees pay out of pocket for their trip, and many of those attendees have expensive intercontinental trips. In order to ease the costs and bring PyCon to those who could use a hand, the organizers set aside an assistance budget to be managed by the Financial Aid committee.

The conference follows an “everyone pays” model, from the chairman to the speakers to the attendees. Your sponsorship of the conference ensures that some of our best speakers and smartest community members are able to make the trip.

A/V

PyCon typically has 95 talks spread across five tracks, so even if you’re at the conference, you’re going to miss out on a bunch of cool stuff. Except not. Along with a quality sound system and excellent live video projection; recording, editing, and hosting is an important part of the A/V package.

Sponsorship helps us spread the knowledge our speakers came to share and helps to educate the tens of thousands who watch the videos from home every year. Take a look at all of the video footage from PyCon 2012 at http://pyvideo.org/category/17/pycon-us-2012.

Networking

It takes a lot to run a 2500 person conference, especially a 2500 person technical conference where everyone’s on their laptop pushing and pulling code, emailing, tweeting, blogging, etc. It costs a lot to keep everyone connected, but it opens the doors for a lot of creation and collaboration, especially during the sprints.

The Python Software Foundation

PyCon is the PSF’s largest single source of funding, and through PyCon we’re able to reinvest surplus funds in the community. After we pay the bills, anything leftover goes to our grants, to sprint funding, to outreach and education efforts, and to the many other local and regional conferences. So far in 2012 the PSF has sponsored 14 other Python conferences to the tune of over $30,000 USD, thanks in part to the generous sponsors of PyCon 2011 and 2012.

What do sponsors get out of sponsorship?

Sponsorship is a two-way street, backing the Python community while providing great values for the organizations that make this conference possible.

Exposure

Sponsoring PyCon puts your organization in front of the entire Python community. Whether it’s the 2500 in attendance or the countless reading along and watching at home, the reach that PyCon sponsors get through sponsorship is huge. We list sponsors in official press releases as well as many of our blog posts, in the program guide for all attendees, and prominently on the PyCon site.

Job Fair

Are you hiring? Whether you have specific job openings or general position information to share, we run a job board on the PyCon that all sponsors are free to utilize.

Sponsors are also invited to the on-site job fair at the conference, where you’ll have a chance to interact with the attendees. In 2012 we heard great feedback from both sponsors and attendees, with several positions being filled!

Expo Hall

The expo hall gets heavy traffic during the conference, giving you a great face-to-face environment to interact with the Python community. Whether it’s engaging users or promoting your services, booths in the expo hall are a sought after commodity. Some sponsors expand on the job fair aspect and do mini-interviews with interested candidates.

Print Media

All sponsors are given the opportunity to insert flyers or pamphlets in all 2500 of the attendee tote bags, as well as listings and ad space in the program guide (length varies by sponsor level). Gold sponsors and above are invited to submit banners to be hung in the main conference room, where all of the conference-wide talks will be given, such as the keynotes and plenary sessions.

À la Carte Options

We’ve added a few options that you can tack on to your sponsorship package, starting with sponsorship of the coffee breaks. Sponsoring either a conference day or a sprint day (or both!) puts your company at the focus of break time, on the tops of the heavily traveled coffee stations throughout the hallways.

Summit and sprint sponsorships are also available, where your support goes towards the operating expenses of the days before and after the conference. The summits are invitational meetings for various topics in the community, and the sprints are an open format to allow anyone to contribute to any project that wants to hack together.

We’ve also added a new option of hosting a workshop, where sponsor organizations have a chance to do in-depth product demos or library walk-throughs. It’s a new option for 2013 that we’re excited to offer! We only have 2 more slots for sponsor workshops!

Small Business Discount

PyCon loves our small business friends. We want you to be included just as much as the megacorps, so we offer a 50% discount on gold and silver sponsorships, as well as our vendor and exhibitor passes.

Free Booth Space for Open Source Projects

If your open source project wants to join in the fun over in the expo hall, we have limited space available to make that happen. If you have the materials to run a booth and the staff to operate it, come on out and engage your users and pick up a few more! It’s on the house.

Conference Passes

All paid sponsorships include reserved conference passes! This means that many sponsorships pay for themselves due to the inclusion of corporate rate conference passes. It's a steal!

Interested?

If you’re interested in sponsoring PyCon 2013, contact chairman Jesse Noller at jnoller@python.org. The Sponsor Prospectus is always available, and we're always willing and able to work with sponsors to tweak packages as needed. We have only two more Platinum sponsorships left, and two more sponsor workshops available!

Current Sponsors!

The organizers would like to thank our current sponsors. We started this whole conference effort much earlier than last year, and the support has been incredible. Without our sponsors, PyCon wouldn’t be 1/100th of what it is, so we greatly appreciate your support!

Diamond Sponsor: Google

Platinum Sponsors: 

Gold sponsors:

Silver Sponsors:

Keep up with our sponsors at https://us.pycon.org/2013/sponsors/ and be sure to let them know we all appreciate their support!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment