I was the events manager for the Drupal Association, for the past few years, and our conferences have gone from mid 30s to over 3,000 in the US and 1,200 in Europe. We are expecting over 1,500 for our London conference in August.
Having outgrown the hotel rooms and free venues that we had through 2007, we set a goal of keeping the ticket price under $400 for the events that included food. This has meant that we need sponsors to cover about half of the revenue. We need to have positive cash-flow on our conferences in order to cover percs such as servers. Even though it is free software, folks really expect those to work. It has been tough to define what support activities are appropriate. We haven't gotten to selling naming rights -- the Oracle DrupalCon... Nice ring. We do provide an exhibit space and a lot of branding opportunities in the program and on swag-bags. There is a certain synergy between us and our sponsors. Hosting companies, for example, are frequent sponsors and also take part in a sponsored referral service (clearly identifies) on our website. While not perfect, it does give us a channel to let providers know if they are doing a good job. Hosting companies that do not behave ethically or reliably are given the boot. While I think that Code4Lib is a pretty singular event, I don't think that it is harmed by being open to sponsorship. I, for one, would love to see some major ILS vendor get actively involved, if only to see how they would respond to being called on every bogus promise of openness they've made. Thanks, Cary -- Cary Gordon The Cherry Hill Company http://chillco.com
