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Introduction
The YAPC (Yet Another Perl Conference) series of conferences are a grassroots effort, run by volunteers. Each year several such conferences occur throughout the world. In Europe the YAPC::Europe Perl Conference began in London in 2000 and is now into it's 7th year. Delegates and speakers from around the UK, Europe and the world attend to hear tutorials and presentations regarding the Perl programming language, as well as many Open Source projects.
The organisation of the YAPC::Europe Perl Conference is done at a grassroots level, and is the responsibility of the local Perl Mongers user group, who will have nominated themselves to host the conference. For 2006 the Birmingham Perl Mongers have the honour of hosting the conference. Being a grassroots conference, funding is largely supported through personal donations and sponsorship, in order to keep attendance fees as low as possible. The reason for this is to attract students, self-funded employees and small companies to get involved in the community and share knowledge and ideas for the benefit of businesses around the world, as it is largely these people who are the key contributors to Perl and Open Source development.
The conference gets advertised both online and in printed media around the world, providing another area for advertising your company and the services you offer to a world market. The YAPC conferences as a whole have gained a considerable amount of respect among many multi-national companies, who regularly sponsor and send key people from their organisations.
Attendees of the conference, cover a wide variety of skills and roles, from the traditional programmers and system administrators, through to Technical Architects, Development Managers, CTOs and even some CEOs. They all come to increase their understanding of the language and software, and to network with key people from other organisations. Any sponsor is in an ideal position to promote themselves and their services to influential and often decision makers with their respective companies.
How To Sponsor
Sponsorship can take many forms, such as:
However you feel you could sponsor or support the organisation of the event, we would be glad to hear from you.
What Do I Get?
In return for your contribution, the conference will provide the following:
In addition for those contributing £1,000 or more, we will also allow two nominated attendees from your company to have their attendance fee waived.
If your company wishes to sponsor a room, the room will be named after the sponsor, with company logos and name being used around the venue to direct attendees, as well as in online and printed schedules.
What Can I Sponsor?
There are some specific items available for sponsorship, which are:
There are many other items that require financing, so even if there isn't a specific item you can contribute to, we will still advertise you sponsorship or donation as above.
Sponsors may also provide promotional material or banners for us to advertise their company in the rooms and break out areas. In addition any merchandise that you may wish to provide for attendees (approximately 300), we can add to our conference pack. Traditionally additional promotion material has covered pens/pencils, notebooks, bags, T-shirts, mugs and occasionally more IT centric promotional items, such as USB sticks and mini-penknife toolkits.
How Much Should I Donate?
As much as you are prepared to, to help organise and run one of the best conferences possible.
For corporate sponsorship and donations we have been looking for contributions of anything from £1,000 to £5,000. If you are a multi-national company that would like to sponsor even more, then we would be delighted to hear from you :) We are looking to provide a professional quality event, and the more money we can raise through sponsorship, the more quality service we can provide.
For individual or small company sponsorship and donations, we are happy to receive as much as you can afford to contribute. Even £100 can help to fund the event.
Questions and Answers
All money contributed will go to pay for all costs and expenses required to organise the conference. Birmingham Perl Mongers have now incorporated as a not-for-profit company, to handle the finances of both the conferences and the user group.
Following the conference, any remaining monies will form a contribution to the organisers of the event for the following year, aside from a small portion that may be used to help fund the purchase of educational equipment for the user group.
No monies are paid to the organisers or board directors of Birmingham Perl Mongers Limited.
Yes and No! It depends how you intend to sponsor or donate to the organisation of the conference. If monies are donated via Yet Another Society (YAS), which is a non-profit, 501(3)(c) corporation in the US, then yes you can claim a tax deduction. However, we suggest you contact a solicitor to understand how best to contribute to us and still be tax deductable. We will endeavour to help wherever we can.
To donate directly, please contact us, and we will provide you with our sponsorship contract and application form. In the meantime, feel free to download and read our Sponsorship Prospectus.
If you or your company would be interested in sponsoring the conference, or require further information, the organisers can be reached via the email address The Organisers. Our Sponsor Liaison is Barbie, who is the founder of the Birmingham Perl Mongers user group, a respected speaker at many international conferences, a CPAN author and established member of the Perl testing community.
Many thanks,
The Birmingham 2006 Organisers
organisers@birmingham.pm.org