[committee] Draft sponsorship letter to Sun

[Davyd Madeley]

On Sat, Mar 18, 2006 at 06:13:14PM +0800, David Adam wrote:

> > This list I've got in my head so far includes:
> >  - Sun
> >  - Redhat
> >  - Canonical
> >  - HP (maybe)
> >  - Dell
> >  - Optus (maybe)
> >  - IBM
> 
> Yes, I like this. However:
> 
> - we still haven't fulfilled our sponsorship obligations to Linux
> Australia. I am not happy for us to go pursuing more sponsorship until
> we've proved that we'll meet the conditions of taking people's money.

AFAIK, this is blocking on two technical problems:
 1) sensible authentication (eg. LDAP) so we can set them as being
    part of the manbo-only group in our authentication system.
 2) marblefish deployment so we can handle developer logins
 3) someone to start building GNOME... uh, me I guess

> - these are all great companies, but you've forgotten two big proprietary
> companies who are have both quite kind to the chronically short-of-cash:
> 
> * Apple. I don't know if their hip new image includes the University
> Computer Club, but if we have to hire dancers to fill the room when
> they're looking at the webcams then so be it. (I've got a court order
> against dancing in public, but no-one has to know that.)

I had indeed forgotten Apple.

> * Microsoft. All flames to /dev/null, please - how much bigger can we
> think?  They're handing out Action Pack stuff left right and centre to
> commerical groups for $notmuch - they might give it to us for $nominal or
> even $0.

The question here is, do HP, IBM, etc. etc. want to be on the same
list as MS? I would expect the answer is "no". If we can't secure
any sponsorship from any of the others, I would consider MS.

> - my experience with sponsorship for AMSA Convention (an event which
> garners five figures of sponsorship) and other bodies is that writing and
> asking for generalised 'sponsorship' (or even sponsership) is unlikely to
> produce optimum results.

Damnit, did I misspell it again? In the past, I've come to the
conclusion that generic letters do SFA. Which is why I've attempted
to produce a shopping list of companies who we can target letters
at.

> IMO, a good sponsorship letter says:
> * what we want (hardware/software/free t-shirts/$5000)
> * why we are a good investment
> * what we do in return (you've got this down, although could we offer
>   them something more? 'pay for part of our t-shirt costs so we can sell
>   them for $5, and we'll splash your logo over the back')
> 
> Why -wouldn't- Sun want a dozen UCC members wearing those (rather spiffy)
> OpenSolaris shirts that the MINCS guys were sporting the other night? Why
> -wouldn't- Microsoft want a copy of Visual Studio on every UCC machine?
> Ask for random promotional material! Ask for things that don't cost
> sponsors any money, as well as those that do! Ask for Truth, Justice and
> freedom! (They're cheap, for one thing.)

So, what's the go with asking for things? Should we produce a
shopping list of things we would like (eg. one of those new Sun
Niagras) and then specifically ask for that? Do we then need to
assign sponsorship levels, would that donation make Sun a Gold
Sponsor? I'm happy to have something like that if we think it's
required.

I had considered things like getting T-shirts, but that seems a
bit crass on the same letter as asking for bundles of money.

> > It would also be nice to go after some of the locals:
> >  - iiNet
> >  - Boffins

 - Jaycar
 - Altronics

> > Perhaps also go after a brewery? In my collation of lists of UCC-like
> > societies, I did notice some number of breweries in their sponsors
> > lists. So perhaps not the stupidest idea.
> 
> They're all good ideas for sponsoring events, too. Prizes and so forth.
> Perhaps we can get some sponsorship for things like intervarsityLAN, too.
> Real prizes, yo.

Yeah. It's been a while since we had real prizes.

> I don't know how much people prefer price over quality, but it might be
> worth wandering over to Broadway Pizza and asking if they'll give us a
> good rate on pizza if we order from there regularly.

Excellent idea.

> I'd like to discuss this more at either this week's or next week's
> meeting. I also don't want Davyd to have to do all the work, so other
> volunteers are required (you don't even have to be on committee - Davyd,
> Frenchie or I can countersign things).

We should get onto this ASAP. I want some hardware from Sun.

It seems to me like putting this info on the wiki might be a bad
idea in case someone gets a hold of it. At least you need a password
to access the list archive (I think). Thoughts?

--d

-- 
Davyd Madeley

http://www.davyd.id.au/
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