----- Original message -----
From: "Nathan Willis" <nwil...@glyphography.com>
To: "Dave Neary" <dne...@maemo.org>
cc: "Randall Arnold" <tex...@ovi.com>, "MeeGo community"
<meego-community@meego.com>
Subject: Re: [MeeGo-community] Defining MeeGo event sponsorship (or,
should we?)
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2011 09:18:27 -0600
On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 3:29 AM, Dave Neary <dne...@maemo.org> wrote:
Hi,
Randall Arnold wrote:
> The easy resolution that comes to mind is a sponsorship pool
> administered by the Linux Foundation at their full discretion
and fed by
> corporate sponsors. �But is this feasable?
>
> Another possibility is co-branded sponsorship. ie, "MeeGo via
Nokia" or
> somesuch phrasing. �But even then, soliciting sponsorship could
be an
> exercise in frustration since there are so many companies
involved in MeeGo.
� I think that the Linux Foundation administering a marketing
budget for
MeeGo makes perfect sense, and I am sure that Intel and Nokia
would be
happy not to be the only people contributing to such a fund (as
they
were not the only people sponsoring the MeeGo Conference).
That said, I am aware of the efforts it usually takes to get a
decent
sponsorship budget for a conference, and giving blind into a fund
is not
going to be an easy sell - there needs to be a way for each
individual
donor to have his or her sponsorship acknowledged on meego.com.
From my own perspective as an event organizer, it's important to
sharply separate having-a-MeeGo-presence at an event from
underwriting-travel-for-MeeGo-representatives (and also from
underwriting-travel-for-MeeGo-speakers) and both from
MeeGo-donating-money-to-be-an-event-sponsor.
The latter is, I think, out-of-band.� MeeGo itself may have corporate
benefactors contributing code and underwriting its own events, but
MeeGo itself is a non-profit project like GNOME, KDE, or Mozilla.
On the other hand, I would *really* like for MeeGo to be able to have
a booth at community events, particularly because I know how many
folks on the ground have questions about it.� Perhaps something like
the "booth box" approach used by other large FOSS projects is worth
exploring: an event box with display material, flyers/handouts, and
any necessary hardware, which when not-in-use is kept by a volunteer,
then shipped to particular events whenever another volunteer arranges
to man the booth.� I believe that is the approach taken by most of
the community Linux distros as well.� And it would certainly help;
I'm confident we could find volunteers for most (though perhaps not
all) events.
�
Nate
--
nathan.p.willis
nwil...@glyphography.com
aim/ym/gtalk:n8willis
identi.ca/n8
I really appreciate the expertise Dave and Nathan bring so thanks for
commenting so quickly guys.
I realize that what Nathan says about MeeGo's peers is on target, but I
still see MeeGo as unique in some ways and possibly deserving a unique
approach to marketing and sponsorship (in addition to what's known to
work).� But maybe that's wishful thinking on my part.
Regardless, we can certainly start small and focus on driving a budget
for MeeGo event booths and the like.� That was a frustrated mission of
mine for Maemo and I had thought (maybe naively) that it would be easier
to accomplish with MeeGo.� But one thing that complicates it is, again,
the multitude of involved companies.
And�while this list is good for honing our vision, it doesn't seem to
help much for facilitating action.� I believe this request fits into the
new Process bug reporting structure so unless there's a strong argument
against I will create a bug so this can get the proper attention.
Randy
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