Ignite RailsConf sponsor letter

[Mike Subelsky]

hey everyone,

Here's the letter I'm getting ready to start sending out to sponsors.  If you've got a contact somewhere at a company that might be interested, please forward this along and let me know so I don't bug that same person :-)

-Mike

I'm a Rails developer in Baltimore and one of the founders of the Ignite Baltimore event.  In honor of RailsConf coming to our city, I'm helping organize the first Ignite RailsConf to be held the night before the conference starts on 6/6/10.  This is an independent event from RailsConf but I've talked to the conference organizers and they are supportive of it.

At Ignite events, 16 people get 5 minutes to talk about something they are passionate about.  The slides get advanced automatically every 15 seconds.  They are high-energy exciting evenings that provoke a lot of discussion. My goal is to have between 200 and 300 people attend, not all of whom need be registered for RailsConf.  I'm going to solicit a mix of high- and low-profile Rails thought leaders to speak, plus a few non-Rails people (like how about a Django person talking about what we can learn from Django? etc.)

Details of the event will be posted to http://igniterailsconf.com and @igniterailsconf as we know them.

I'm currently talking with different venues near the Inner Harbor and working up a budget.  To pull this off, I'm looking for sponsors to help defray the costs of renting a room and providing appetizers to the crowd.  Here's what the budget is looking like so far:

- $1000 to rent the room

- $300 for two bartenders (cash bar)

- $660 for A/V support (projector, screen, microphone, plus technical assistance)

- $2000-$3000 for food for 250 people, depending on how fancy we'd like it to be

I haven't established exact sponsorship tiers yet, but I'd probably like to have 2 or 3 tiers. Having run four successful Ignite events already, I know how to thank sponsors in a prolific, highly visible way that will make you and the crowd feel good.  All sponsors would be able to hang banners at the event, and will be thanked from the stage by the MC.  We'd also feature your logo on our website and tweet our gratitude.  For larger sponsors we would allow you to have a booth of some kind as well.

I'm considering charging a small amount to attendees (like $5); any proceeds from the event would be donated to a charitable cause.

I'm also looking for great speakers! If you or someone in your company would like to present, please submit an idea here:

http://igniterailsconf.com/proposals/new

-Mike