[OSGeo-Conf] FOSS4G sponsorship

[Daniel Morissette]

Dear conference committee,

Last year I commented to some people that FOSS4G2007 sponsorship was out 
of price for small companies and that this was in my opinion a bad thing 
since small organizations could not show their support for the event by 
sponsoring it. It was agreed that our community is for the most part 
constituted of individuals and small organizations and we said at the 
time that we'd try to do better in future years.

Well, I came across the FOSS4G2008 sponsorship doc and the situation 
doesn't seem to have improved:
http://conference.osgeo.org/foss4g2008/docs/FOSS4G2008sponsorshipandexhibitorprospectus15Feb08.pdf

If I read this right, the lowest sponsorship level costs 40,000 ZAR, 
which would be about 5k$ (is that right?)... about the same price range 
as FOSS4G2007 if I remember correctly, so there is no room for the small 
players this year either.

What's the plan for 2009? Have we tought about making room for lower 
levels of sponsorship?

I have heard the whole argument about the lower levels of sponsorship 
diluting the value of the higher levels... but come on, this is not the 
Google/Autodesk annual meeting... let's try to be creative and try to 
give the small players a chance to get their logo up there and show 
their support for the event and OSGeo as a whole (FOSS4G2006 could do it 
so that's not impossible).

Daniel
-- 
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/