Sponsorship (almost) closed

We now have 7 sponsors plus one more that has said they will sponsor but has not confirmed how much yet. See http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/sponsors for their details.

This probably gives us enough seed dollars to cover fixed-price costs;

• venue (paid)
• high-speed internet and usage (hopefully – cost unknown)
• some free/discounted registrations for sponsors, speakers and/or people who helped organise
• name badges
• printed programme and other stationary (probably)
• banner with sponsors' logos (maybe)

And frees up paying attendees' registration costs to cover just the per-person costs; 2 included lunches ($50 I think).

I'm inclined not to offer student discounts since it will take resources we don't have to make changes to the website and/or more manual overhead (i.e. I don't have time). It also introduces risk of having lots of students that don't even cover the cost of their meal(s).

If we need more dollars or financial security, we could allow registrants to become individual sponsors at registration-time. Alternatively we could offer early-bird registration of $50 and late/general registration of $70. We should also aim to retain seed money for the next DrupalSouth. Any extra could be used for drink tokens and or DA donations.

In order to decide the price and open the website for registrations (ideally by December 1) we need confirm or get a better idea of all these numbers/costs. Educated estimates or quotes would be ideal. The highest-risk factor by far here is internet – potentially expensive, critically important and very difficult to obtain (apparently).

• High speed internet into venue (see above)
  • Bevan had some conversations with Citylink but that didn't lead on
  • Josh Waihi tried to connect with someone in the NZX building next door who have Citylink fibre, but hasn't had luck (yet)
  • Bevan has connected with Richard at R2 who thinks he may be able to help us with either NZX fibre plus backhaul, or an alternative link (Satellite, wireless P2P, mobile CafeNet?)
  • Richard can't yet confirm what or how much and we should continue to pursue alternatives
• 2 lunches
  • According to menus on the website, $25 pp should be enough, but we need to have a conversation with Gail about it to confirm
• Name badges
  • This is the bare minimum needed for stationary
• Printed programme and other stationary
  • I think we spent about $300 on materials and some printing for combined name badge and programme for DS Chch, but Gold did much of it by hand and there were half the number of attendees. We will probably need to pay a printing company to do it.
• Banner with sponsors' logos
  • We're not committed to this, but it would significantly increase value for sponsors. We won't order it till we know we can afford it, but need a quote/estimate in order to know.

I_am_trying_to_understand has very kindly taken over speaker and session-wrangling and has progressed an awful lot in the last 4 days. We have a lot of keen speakers and great session ideas. I'll let her update the group when she sees fit.