Who is handling sponsors?

[Rico Jones]

Hey Y'all,

I had somebody reach out to me because they wanted to sponsor one of our meetings. Where / to whom do I send them?

-Rico

[Chuck Vose]

I think the email subject should be: "do we handle sponsors?"

It's probably one of the things holding us back as a group, but it requires thought and consensus building so it's fallen by the wayside.

Now that you have the camera setup mostly figured out, do you feel like taking on some responsibility here? We (the collective group) can guide you along the path, but our (metaphorical) legs are tired right now.

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[Rico Jones]

Hmmm, okay.

I feel strongly that this is something that needs to get done, but I also feel strongly that I don’t have the time to do it all on my own. If I can convince a few of you to jump in alongside me, then we’ll give it a go. I’ll accost some of you about this at the next meeting and report back to this list (email is too high latency for figuring some of this stuff out).

-Rico

[Sam Livingston-Gray]

Yeah.  Historically, we've only dealt with sponsorship in the form of meeting space (which has been tricky to find as the group has grown!), and *maybe* beer (Crowd Compass) or light snacks (CubeSpace, RIP).  Since New Relic started hosting us, they've also been graciously providing pizza and other refreshments, which has been easy to manage, since—from what I can tell—Brent basically organizes all of it for us (thanks, Brent!).

The key aspect of that kind of sponsorship is that it hasn't required much coordination on our part (see: "anarchist ghost pirate ship").  As evidenced by Jesse's lightning talk last time, dealing with even semi-trivial amounts of cash is something we just haven't had the structure for.

Hmm.  As I write that out, it occurs to me that "paying for recording services" might be another sponsorship opportunity with relatively low administrative demands...

It sounds like Stumptown Syndicate would like to act as an umbrella org for user groups with similar (lack of) structure, but (based on Kirsten's request for expertise at the beginning of the September meetup) I'm guessing that's a medium- to long-term goal.  Maybe if we can keep coming up with in-kind or easily brokered sponsorship opportunities, we can kick that can down the road until Stumptown is able to step in?

-Sam

[Chuck Vose]

Rico,

If you need extra foot power, we could put a general call out for volunteers. The important thing is that we have a person we trust as a point person.

Sounds like you probably need three types of volunteers:
* 1x co-coordinator (because it's just a good idea)
* n brainstormers (a Mars group perhaps¥)
* m general volunteers

¥ a Mars group is a sample of the best of the community, aka, who you would send to Mars to populate it if earth was dying and we could only send 5 (and I guess Mars needs a ruby group?)

Anyways, the general volunteers are easy, the brainstormers are easy if you get a list together and keep the meeting shortish. The co-coordinator is probably the hardest part; do you have a friend or someone that you often greet at pdx ruby? It really makes all the difference. :)