developer-event-sponsorship

{
  "skill_name": "developer-event-sponsorship",
  "evals": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "prompt": "I run DevRel at Halyard Systems - we sell a Kubernetes cost-optimisation controller, self-serve from EUR 49/month plus an enterprise tier. I've just been handed EUR 90,000 for developer events in 2027 and my boss wants awareness in the Rust community, more signups, and two senior SRE hires out of it. I have three engineers who can travel, maybe 12 days each across the whole year, and I'm the only person who touches event measurement. What's already on my desk: Ferrous Summit (the big US Rust conference), three regional Rust days in Europe, two student hackathons, and a Berlin meetup we've sponsored twice. This is meant to build something that lasts, not a one-off. What should I do with the money?",
      "expected_output": "Two or three candidate year portfolios with allocation splits, staffing cost and what each deliberately fails at; one recommended with the losers explained; a single primary objective; the farm-team shape deleted because one person owns measurement; an unallocated reserve held back.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Names exactly one primary objective for the plan, or one per event, and states that a sponsorship cannot carry two primary objectives",
        "Presents two or three candidate portfolios for the year rather than a single recommended list of events",
        "Gives each candidate portfolio its own allocation split, the staffing it consumes, and what it deliberately fails at",
        "Recommends one portfolio and states why each rejected portfolio loses",
        "Asks for explicit agreement on the chosen portfolio before discussing any negotiation or purchase",
        "Deletes the farm-team shape (student hackathons plus one practitioner conference) rather than ranking it last, because one person owns event measurement",
        "Names ecosystem-anchored as the default portfolio shape, and either applies it or names the specific condition that would move the plan to flagship-led",
        "States the efficiency ordering of the portfolio shapes explicitly, with ecosystem-anchored ahead of flagship-led, farm-team and regional spread",
        "States that flagship-led and ecosystem-anchored tie on effort, and justifies why they are equal on effort while differing on efficiency",
        "Holds 15-25% of the EUR 90,000 unallocated as a reserve and names what the reserve is for",
        "Expresses effort as staff-days, travel overhead, reusable preparation and follow-up capacity, never as a currency amount",
        "States which interview answer moved which option, naming the three-engineer, 12-day-each staffing ceiling as a driver"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 2,
      "prompt": "Two quotes landed this week and my CMO has already made up his mind. We're Lumenpath - API observability, $200/month entry plan, self-serve plus a small enterprise team. Plumbline Conf is a volunteer-run community conference, 700 attendees, quoting us Gold at $6,000: a table if space allows, four passes, and logo on talk videos is another $1,000 on top. Continuum Summit is a big vendor conference quoting Gold at $25,000: a 10x10 booth, six passes, logo on the hall wall, badge scanning included. My CMO says Continuum's Gold is obviously four times the value for four times the price. Plumbline also lists a 90-minute hands-on workshop add-on at $12,000, which looks insane to me. Which Gold do we buy?",
      "expected_output": "A refusal of the tier-name comparison, a line-item rebuild of both packages, the three prospectus clauses read before price, the lower-tier-plus-add-on play surfaced, passes treated as money, and a fully loaded cost plus a pre-set threshold before any verdict.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Rejects comparing the two events by tier name and states that tier names carry no meaning across events",
        "Rebuilds the comparison from package line items rather than from the Gold label or the $6,000 versus $25,000 ratio",
        "Explicitly refuses the CMO's 'four times the value' reading",
        "Reads three clauses before price: what contact data the sponsor receives, how a stage slot is obtained, and which surfaces are sold separately",
        "States the within-event efficiency ordering as lower tier plus the one add-on that reaches the audience, ahead of the cheapest tier clearing the booth price floor, ahead of logo-only, ahead of top tier",
        "Treats the $12,000 workshop add-on as correctly priced hands-on attention rather than as an overpriced upsell, noting it outprices whole tiers",
        "Treats included passes as a subtractable money line and conditions their value on being able to staff them",
        "Checks whether an eligibility-gated startup or end-user tier exists before settling on a rung",
        "States that a community or volunteer-run conference typically sells no attendee contact data at any price, and does not assume badge scanning exists at Plumbline",
        "Notes that a booth sits behind a price floor, so deciding whether a booth is needed sets the minimum spend before the tier list is read",
        "Costs both options fully loaded - fee, add-ons, booth build and shipping, swag, travel and accommodation, and loaded staff time - before any verdict",
        "Names staff time as the cost line most often omitted and the one that most often doubles the total",
        "Sets a target cost per qualified conversation and a minimum conversation count before recommending either purchase, and derives the target from the company's blended acquisition cost rather than from the sponsorship fee"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 3,
      "prompt": "DevTide Expo is pitching us hard and I need an answer today. 12,000 attendees expected, brand-new event in Austin, first edition. Booth is $34,000. Their rep keeps repeating that it's the cheapest cost-per-attendee on our whole list - $2.83 a head versus $40-plus at the smaller conferences. They've also offered to send us the full attendee list as a CSV after the show, which nobody else does. They need a signed contract within nine days or the price goes up 20%. They can't share role breakdowns yet because registration only opened last month. We're Orrery Labs, we sell a CI caching layer to platform engineering teams. Do we sign?",
      "expected_output": "A decline, with cost-per-attendee rejected as the deciding figure, the attendee-list offer named as both a walk-away signal and an ethics failure, the deadline-before-data pattern named, the evidence request listed, and the decision recorded with its reason.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Rejects cost-per-attendee as the deciding figure and states that headcount is the least informative number in a prospectus",
        "Recommends declining or walking away rather than negotiating the price down",
        "Names the offered attendee-list CSV as a walk-away signal rather than a differentiating benefit",
        "Refuses the attendee list as an ethics failure where the attendees never consented, not as a point to caveat or negotiate",
        "Names deadline pressure arriving before the audience data as its own walk-away trigger",
        "Names unverifiable demographics and a first-time organizer making large promises as walk-away triggers",
        "Lists the audience evidence to demand before pricing anything, covering role mix and seniority, company size or buying influence, geography and travel mix, prior editions and returning-sponsor rate, package line items, program balance between technical and sponsor content, and follow-up rights",
        "States that a missing post-event report or missing demographic actuals is itself the answer rather than a neutral gap",
        "Scores the event against the company's own objective rather than against other events' prices",
        "Notes that a zero on ICP overlap ends the evaluation regardless of any total score",
        "Records the decline with its reason so the event is not rebought next year on the strength of its headcount",
        "Offers the organizer evidence request as the concrete next step before any signature",
        "Ends in a decision - a decline, or a stated threshold under which it would be signed - never a maybe"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 4,
      "prompt": "We've already paid EUR 14,000 to sponsor Nordhack, a 48-hour student hackathon in Tallinn in seven weeks, 400 students. The package gives us a mentor table, a prize track we name ourselves, and a 30-minute slot on Friday evening. I'm at Tessellate - we sell a real-time geospatial API. Marketing wants the prize to be 'Best Use of the Tessellate API' with EUR 3,000 cash, and they want to hire a booth crew from a local agency because our engineers are heads-down on a release. We'd also love to turn that Friday slot into a proper hands-on workshop, though we've never written one. Three engineers could come if I push. What's the plan for the two days?",
      "expected_output": "The prize category reframed around the problem, judging criteria published before entries open and judging kept unbuyable, the agency crew rejected for technical staff, the workshop deleted for lack of curriculum, hackathon crunch-hour staffing, and a qualification bar set before the event.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Reframes the prize category around the problem rather than the product, and rejects 'Best Use of the Tessellate API' as the category name",
        "States that judging criteria must be published before entries open and cannot be changed afterwards",
        "Refuses to let the sponsorship influence the judging outcome, including favouring teams the mentor table helped",
        "Rejects the agency booth crew and requires technical staff who can debug a stranger's code",
        "Brainstorms two or three activation options for the package already bought, names the trade-off in each, and recommends one before anything is purchased",
        "Deletes or defers the hands-on workshop because no curriculum exists and building one runs to roughly a quarter of preparation rather than seven weeks",
        "Names the compliance exposure specific to a prize track: prize promotions are regulated in some jurisdictions, criteria fix once entries open, and prize value can be reportable",
        "Staffs the hackathon crunch hours - kickoff and team formation, the evening build peak, the hours before submission, and demos - and runs a skeleton crew overnight, at meal times and through the mid-event lull",
        "Rotates staff off the floor rather than running the same people continuously",
        "Defines the qualified-conversation bar and the named next step before the event and briefs every staffer on both",
        "Lists prizes the audience actually wants - cash, quality hardware, conference tickets, credits with no redemption maze, time with someone interesting - rather than product credits alone",
        "Sets follow-up inside 48 hours, personal and on the substance of each conversation, with no generic sequence and no automatic addition to a sales sequence",
        "Sets a fully loaded cost and a threshold even though the fee is already spent, so the sponsorship can be judged at renewal"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 5,
      "prompt": "My boss wants a verdict on last year's PlatformSummit sponsorship by Friday. Here's everything we have: 1,412 badge scans, 3,000 stickers gone, two blog mentions, and the team says the buzz on the floor was great. Fee was $22,000 and we sent four people for three days. Sales imported all 1,412 scans into the CRM and worked approximately none of them. We never captured a baseline of anything. We're Brackwater - infrastructure-as-code linting, sold to platform teams. Renew or not?",
      "expected_output": "A plain statement that the question cannot be answered honestly without a pre-set threshold and baseline, a refusal to manufacture a return from badge scans, the qualified conversation defined, the routing table applied instead of defaulting to sales, and the process fixed for the next event.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "States plainly that the question cannot be answered honestly, because no threshold and no baseline were set before signing",
        "Refuses to manufacture a return figure or an attribution claim from the 1,412 badge scans",
        "Rejects badge scans as a measure of value and names the qualified conversation as the only unit that compares across a hackathon, a community day and a mega-conference",
        "Defines the qualified conversation as all three of: has the problem the product solves, holds or influences the decision, and agreed to a named next step",
        "Names importing all 1,412 scans into the CRM and routing them to sales as the failure that fills a CRM with records nobody works",
        "Gives the conversation routing table - case-study material to marketing, feedback and beta candidates to product, bugs to engineering, partner interest to partnerships, candidates to recruiting, buyers to sales - rather than defaulting everything to sales",
        "Recomputes the fully loaded cost including loaded staff time for four people across preparation, travel, on-site days and follow-up, not just the $22,000 fee",
        "Does not substitute a secondary metric that happens to look better for the missing primary one",
        "Returns one of the three verdicts - renew, renegotiate or drop - rather than a maybe, and states what evidence each would need",
        "Fixes the process for the next sponsorship: a target cost per qualified conversation and a minimum conversation count set before signing",
        "Requires a pre-event baseline of the primary metric captured one to four weeks before the next event",
        "Requires one event-specific URL and one promo or credit code per event, never reused across events, and requires the post-event review to run within two weeks while the conversation log is still accurate"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 6,
      "prompt": "We're sponsoring Meridian Python Days - volunteer-run, 1,100 attendees - and we bought the EUR 9,000 tier: a table, six passes, and a two-minute pitch from the stage between talks. I want to do all of it: staff the table, run a 90-minute workshop, host an evening dinner for 20 people, and put money into their diversity scholarship fund. Only two of us are going, me and one engineer. We're Ferrite, a Postgres change-data-capture tool, self-serve at $99/month. Two questions on top: how do we get the badge scan data off the table, and how do we get one of our engineers onto the main stage? We'd happily go up a tier if they'd hand us a slot.",
      "expected_output": "The workshop and dinner deleted because two people can staff exactly one thing, the help-desk booth recommended, badge scan data explained as non-existent at a community event with opt-in capture instead, the paid stage slot refused as an ethics failure and routed to the CFP, and the scholarship fund kept off the value ladder.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Deletes both the workshop and the evening side event, on the grounds that a team of two travelling can staff exactly one activation",
        "Recommends the help-desk booth as the activation: technical staff who debug a stranger's code, a demo the attendee drives, and a win reachable in about five minutes",
        "Brainstorms two or three activation options with the trade-off in each, recommends one, and validates it before anything is bought",
        "States the activation efficiency ordering explicitly - help-desk booth ahead of prize track, ahead of side event, ahead of workshop",
        "States that value on this axis is qualified developer conversations that continue after the event, never badge scans",
        "States that a volunteer-run community conference holds no attendee contact data and offers no badge scanning, so the scan-data request has no answer there",
        "Requires opt-in consent capture instead - an opt-in draw, a workshop signup, or a QR to the event landing page - and states that a smaller clean list beats a larger invented one",
        "Refuses to buy a main-stage slot at an event that runs a CFP, and names it as an ethics failure rather than a negotiating position",
        "Routes the stage ambition to the CFP process, referencing samber/developer-relations-skills@conference-cfp-submission",
        "Keeps the scholarship fund off the activation ranking, states it produces no conversations by design, and frames it as a deliberate awareness or employer-brand purchase",
        "Warns that trade-show behaviour at a community event costs more credibility than the logo buys",
        "Notes the sponsor code of conduct a community conference asks a sponsor to sign",
        "Treats the two-minute stage pitch as a brief timed pitch included in the package, not as a talk slot or a substitute for one"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 7,
      "prompt": "Draft me the negotiation email. We're Solstice Metrics - time-series database, enterprise-sold, around $40k average contract value. The event is Northlight Cloud Days, first edition, 700 attendees projected, and we're looking at their EUR 18,000 tier. My asks, in the order I care about them: knock 20% off the price, get us the attendee list, get our CTO 15 minutes on the main stage, and get our logo onto the keynote backdrop. They also run three other events in the same series next year, so I'll push for a 25% bundle discount across all four. What should the email say?",
      "expected_output": "The attendee list, the bought stage slot and the keynote backdrop refused as ethics failures; the remaining asks sequenced by efficiency with the previous post-event report first, overridden here by the attendance remedy because this is a first edition; published multi-event discounts checked before inventing a bundle ask; a draft email produced.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Refuses the attendee-list ask outright as an ethics failure, not as a low-probability ask, and states these refusals are not gray areas to probe in negotiation",
        "Refuses to buy the CTO a main-stage slot at an event running a CFP, and refuses the keynote backdrop as buying a keynote's content or an implied speaking slot",
        "States that the asks compete for a finite budget - the number of things the organizer says yes to before the conversation turns - rather than for money",
        "Gives the efficiency ordering of asks with the previous edition's post-event report first, ahead of extra staff passes, lead-data delivery timing, placement on a specific high-traffic surface, a workshop or demo-theatre slot, permission to publish content, and a written attendance estimate with a remedy",
        "Justifies the post-event report leading: it costs nothing to ask, arrives before signature, and can still cancel the deal",
        "Overrides the default order for this case and makes the written attendance estimate with a remedy the first ask, because this is a first edition",
        "Names what the default ordering starves - the attendance remedy and the workshop slot - rather than silently dropping them",
        "States that the ordering sequences the asks and never shortens the list",
        "Checks whether the event series already publishes multi-event discounts before inventing the 25% bundle ask",
        "Notes that some event families fix multi-event discounts at published single-digit percentages rather than negotiating them",
        "Names the conditions under which packages genuinely move: early commitment, multi-event or multi-year deals, off-peak editions, growing events, and bringing something the organizer wants such as a workshop, a mentor pool or a scholarship fund",
        "Does not lead the email with the 20% price cut as the primary ask",
        "Produces an actual draft email carrying the surviving asks in the recommended order"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 8,
      "prompt": "We're Kilnworks and we run two motions. One is a free-plus-$29/month self-serve CLI that developers buy on a card with no sales contact at all. The other is an enterprise platform sold by a four-person sales team with a nine-month cycle. For 2027 we've committed to two sponsorships: a 500-person student hackathon in Porto and an enterprise-heavy platform engineering conference in Chicago. Leadership wants one KPI across both so the board slide stays clean - they've picked 'pipeline sourced from events'. Give me the measurement plan.",
      "expected_output": "A refusal of the single shared KPI, objectives set per event rather than per year, the hackathon assigned awareness or recruiting rather than pipeline, sourced-revenue claims rejected in favour of influence, in-product measurement for the self-serve motion, and per-event URLs, baselines and 30/60/90 windows.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Refuses the single 'pipeline sourced from events' KPI applied across both events",
        "Sets the objective per event rather than per year, and says explicitly which event carries which objective",
        "Assigns the student hackathon an awareness or recruiting objective rather than pipeline, and the Chicago conference a pipeline objective",
        "States that for the enterprise product the attendee is usually a champion rather than a signer, so the event's contribution is influence rather than source",
        "Rejects sourced-revenue claims the CRM cannot support and keeps pipeline claims riding on the CRM",
        "For the self-serve CLI, measures in-product - event-specific signup URL, promo or credit code, activation curve - rather than through a sales sequence",
        "Makes the self-serve follow-up a product invitation rather than a sales sequence",
        "Names what must not be claimed per objective, including attributed revenue for an awareness objective and activations from anyone who merely saw the logo for an adoption objective",
        "Requires one event-specific URL and one promo or credit code per event, never reused across events",
        "Requires a pre-event baseline of each event's primary metric captured one to four weeks before that event",
        "Measures the event cohort at 30, 60 and 90 days, plus one pipeline check a full sales cycle out",
        "Defines the event cohort as everyone arriving through the event's own URL, code, workshop signup or consented scan, tagged once and never merged into a generic campaign"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 9,
      "prompt": "I have to put something concrete in front of the board on 14 March, about eight weeks out, or the event budget gets reassigned. We're Marlstone, a feature-flag service, self-serve from $59/month. There's $45,000 left in the event budget. My CEO's idea is a splashy hands-on workshop track at a big conference in October as the centrepiece, and he keeps bringing it up. Two engineers are available. We're already contracted at a mid-size platform conference in February where we bought their smallest tier, and there's a new regional DevOps day in May we haven't committed to yet. What do I do?",
      "expected_output": "The October workshop deleted outright against the eight-week result date, the already-contracted February event's add-ons promoted over the new May commitment, the near-date rungs and help-desk booth promoted, the result date separated from the contract deadline, and a threshold set before any spend.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Deletes the October workshop outright, on the grounds that a quarter of preparation does not fit inside a result date eight weeks away",
        "Refuses the CEO's workshop centrepiece for the March board date rather than accommodating it as a reduced version",
        "Promotes buying an add-on at the already-contracted February conference over committing to the new May event",
        "Promotes the meetup and community rungs, and the help-desk booth activation, specifically because of the near result date",
        "States which interview answer moved which option, naming the 14 March date as the driver",
        "Separates the date the result must be visible from the contract deadline, and asks for both",
        "Checks which branded surfaces or add-ons are still available at the February event, noting that the best ones sell out months ahead",
        "Caps the recommendation at what two engineers can actually staff for the full hall hours",
        "Notes that an October event can still be right under a compounding mandate, and says what would have to be true to buy it on a separate decision",
        "Sets a target cost per qualified conversation and a minimum conversation count for whatever is bought, before the money moves",
        "Keeps a share of the remaining $45,000 unallocated rather than spending all of it"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 10,
      "prompt": "Quick maths check before I sign. Sponsorship fee $16,000, workshop add-on $9,000, flights and hotels for four people $7,200, swag and print $2,400 - so $34,600 all in. Last year we closed 260 new customers at a blended acquisition cost of about $1,100, and roughly 35% of our sales conversations turn into an opportunity. The expo hall is open 9 to 6 for three days. Tell me our cost per lead and whether this is a good deal. We're Verdigris Compute - GPU scheduling, sold to ML platform teams.",
      "expected_output": "Cost per lead reframed as cost per qualified conversation with its three-part bar, the $34,600 rejected as incomplete once loaded staff time and the missing lines are added, the target derived from the $1,100 and 35% figures rather than from the fee, a minimum conversation count set alongside it, and no verdict without audience evidence.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Reframes 'cost per lead' as cost per qualified conversation and defines the bar as all three of: has the problem, holds or influences the decision, and agreed to a named next step",
        "Rejects the $34,600 total as incomplete",
        "Adds loaded staff time for four people across preparation, travel, on-site days and follow-up, and shows how much it changes the total",
        "States that staff time is the line most teams omit and the line that most often doubles the total",
        "Adds the remaining missing cost lines to the worksheet, including booth build, shipping and storage between editions",
        "Notes opportunity cost of the engineer-days even if it is not priced",
        "Derives the target cost per qualified conversation from the $1,100 blended acquisition cost and the 35% conversation-to-opportunity rate, not from the sponsorship fee",
        "Carries both the $1,100 and the 35% figures through the arithmetic explicitly",
        "Sets a minimum conversation count alongside the target cost per conversation, not one without the other",
        "Fixes both numbers before signing rather than computing them after the event",
        "Declines to call it a good deal without the event's audience evidence, and names which evidence is missing",
        "Notes that staffing the booth across three days of 9-to-6 hall hours is the binding constraint, and checks it against the four people available"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": 11,
      "prompt": "Three things landed on me at Ravenscar Tooling this week. First: we spend 55% of our DevRel budget on events, and finance found a report saying the industry average is around 41%, so they want me to cut to 41% by Q3. Second: we want to stop sponsoring other people's conferences and run our own one-day conference next year instead. Third: we want to put $30,000 a year into sponsoring the open-source projects our product depends on, and our VP says that comes out of the event budget too. Sort this out for me.",
      "expected_output": "The ~41% figure refused as a target with its source, year and weaknesses named; the budget driven by objective, threshold and staffing instead; running their own conference, open-source project sponsorship and the pillar-level split each routed to the correct sibling skill.",
      "files": [],
      "expectations": [
        "Refuses to treat the roughly 41% published events share as a target to cut to",
        "States what the figure is usable for - evidence that events historically dominate DevRel spend - and names its published source and year",
        "Names the weaknesses of the figure explicitly: a small respondent count and reported shares summing to more than 100%",
        "Bases the event budget on the objective, the per-event threshold and the staffing ceiling rather than on an industry percentage",
        "Routes running their own conference to samber/developer-relations-skills@developer-meetup-program rather than answering it here",
        "Routes the open-source project sponsorship to samber/developer-relations-skills@oss-sponsors-brand-strategy rather than answering it here",
        "States that open-source project sponsorship is not part of the developer-event budget",
        "Routes the pillar-level budget split to samber/developer-relations-skills@devrel-budget-allocation",
        "Does not answer with a recommended percentage of DevRel budget for events",
        "Keeps its own answer scoped to which events to sponsor, at what tier, with which activation and against what threshold"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "trigger_queries": [
    { "query": "Should we sponsor KubeCon next year?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "We've got 60k for developer events in 2027 - what should we do with it?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "They quoted us Gold at $18k, is that worth it?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "is this booth worth it", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "How do I split our conference budget across events this year?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "We're sponsoring a hackathon in six weeks, what should we actually do there?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Was last year's conference sponsorship worth it?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "What tier should we buy at PyCon?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Help me negotiate a conference sponsorship package", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "The organiser wants $25k for Platinum and I have no idea if that's normal", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Which developer conferences should we have a presence at in 2027?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "how do we prove our event spend actually worked", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "We spent 40k on booths last year and got nothing out of it, what went wrong?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Is it better to buy the lanyard sponsorship or a bigger booth?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "We want to get in front of Rust developers - where should the money go?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Our CFO wants a number for what the expo hall actually costs us", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Should we run a workshop at the conference or just staff the booth?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "planning our event presence for next year", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "What should our booth actually do at a community conference?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Can I get the attendee list from a conference we sponsor?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "We're seed stage with no cash - can we sponsor with credits and hardware instead?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "How many people should we send to a conference we're paying to be at?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Trying to decide between one big conference and ten local meetups", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "What should I ask an event organiser before I pay them anything?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "We got 1,200 badge scans and zero deals. Now what?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "How do I measure ROI on conference sponsorship?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Is a diversity scholarship fund a good use of our event money?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "should we renew our sponsorship at DjangoCon", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "We put money into a local meetup every month, is that doing anything for us?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "What's a fair price for a 90-minute workshop slot at a conference?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "My VP wants us at every event and I have three engineers", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "We need engineers to know we exist. Trade shows? Conferences? What actually works?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "How much of our DevRel money should go into booths and tables?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Our competitor has a booth at every conference and we don't. Does it matter?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "I need to justify the expo spend at the board review in March", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "What do we actually get for $8,000 at a Python conference?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "We're hiring Go engineers - is sponsoring GopherCon a sensible way to do that?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "How do we follow up on conference leads without being creepy?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "We'd be the only sponsor at a first-edition event. Red flag or opportunity?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Put together a plan for the events we'll back this year", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "The event contract deadline is Friday and I still haven't decided", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "what counts as a qualified conversation at a booth", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Should we pay for a prize track at a student hackathon?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "We paid for a stage slot, it came out as a sales pitch and people walked out", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Our booth sat empty for three days straight", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "The community got annoyed at our booth last year. How do we not repeat that?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Any tips for getting more out of the conferences we already pay for?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "I want to compare three conference packages side by side", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "The prospectus says Diamond gets ten minutes after the keynote. Worth $20k?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Can we just buy a keynote slot?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Do we even need a booth?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "How do I decide which events to drop next year?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Writing the 2027 plan for where our developer marketing money goes on events", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "the organiser can't tell me who actually attends, is that normal", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "what should go into a post-event report for a sponsorship we bought", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Two engineers are flying to a conference we're paying for. What should they do all day?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "We've been asked to fund a hackathon prize - what should the category be?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Is it worth flying four people to Berlin for a table at a conference?", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "Our event spend has no owner and no numbers attached to it. Help me fix that.", "should_trigger": true },
    { "query": "How do I get my talk accepted at KubeCon?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Write a CFP abstract for my talk on eBPF observability", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Which conferences should I submit talks to next year?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "My talk got accepted - turn the abstract into a 30-minute outline", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Help me build a submission calendar for conference CFPs", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How do I start a monthly developer meetup in Lyon?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "We want to run our own user group - what format should it use?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "I'm organising a conference. How should I price my sponsorship tiers?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "A vendor offered to buy pizza for the meetup I run - what limits should I set on them?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How do I find speakers for the meetup I organise?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Build the run-of-show for the conference we're hosting in June", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Which open-source projects should our company sponsor on GitHub Sponsors?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How much should we fund the maintainers of our top dependencies?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "I maintain a popular library - how do I set up sponsor tiers for it?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Write the corporate sponsorship prospectus for my open-source project", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Split our $400k DevRel budget across content, community, education and tooling", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How much of the DevRel budget should go to headcount versus programs?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "My live demo keeps breaking on stage - how do I make it survivable?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Build a fallback plan for a demo that depends on venue wi-fi", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Which DevRel KPIs should I report to the exec team every quarter?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Build a tracking plan for our docs and repository analytics", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Design a developer ambassador program with perks and fixed terms", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Plan a quarter of blog posts and videos for our developer audience", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Pitch our funding round to tech press", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Write a technical case study on how a customer runs our API in production", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How do we make senior engineers want to work at our company?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Should we start a Discord for our users?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Write a code of conduct for our community Slack", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Benchmark our competitor's documentation and community responsiveness", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Plan the open-source launch of our project on Hacker News", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How should we price the tiers of our developer tool?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "What should the limits on our free tier be?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Design the interview loop for hiring a developer advocate", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "I want to become a developer advocate - what portfolio do I need?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Who should DevRel report to, marketing or product?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Write a quickstart that gets a developer to their first API call in five minutes", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Audit our documentation structure against Diataxis", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Turn our commits into release notes for v3.0", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Write a migration guide for the breaking change from v2 to v3", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Cut our developer audience into named, sized segments", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Map the developer journey from discovery through to advocacy", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "We're exhibiting at a dental industry trade show - design the booth", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Book flights and a hotel for four people going to a conference in Berlin", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Find me a venue for our company offsite", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Our company wants to sponsor a local youth sports club - what's a fair amount?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Should we buy Google Ads for our developer tool?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Run an SEO audit on our documentation site", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Write a press release for our Series B", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Design a referral program for our SaaS", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How do we get listed on a cloud provider's marketplace?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Draft a partnership agreement with a systems integrator", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Our Discord has 8,000 members and nobody posts - how do I measure health?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "What should we open source and what stays proprietary?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Choose a license for our new project", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Design a certification program for our platform", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Prepare me for a podcast interview about our architecture", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Write a script for a five-minute product screencast", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "How do I triage 400 open GitHub issues?", "should_trigger": false },
    { "query": "Optimise my GitHub profile README", "should_trigger": false }
  ]
}

# On-site activation playbooks

Contents: activation types, in step 6's order → staffing rhythm → staff brief → booth conversation examples → follow-up sequences.

## Activation types

Listed in the efficiency order step 6 sets - help-desk booth > prize track > side event > workshop - with the scholarship fund off that ladder. Step 6 owns the ranking and the promotion conditions; this page holds the execution detail.

**Help-desk booth.** At least two technical people per shift, both able to answer the follow-up question, with one always free when the other is deep in someone's laptop. Keep the queue visible and short: a waiting developer leaves. Fails when staffed by people who cannot go past the demo path.

**Prize track (hackathons).** Frame the category around the problem - "best use of real-time data", not "best use of our SDK" - so entries stay creative and judging stays defensible. Sit judges who understand the technology; judging on future sales potential, or favouring teams the booth helped, is visible and remembered. Publish the criteria before entries open, because they cannot be changed afterwards.

Prizes people want:

- cash
- quality hardware
- conference tickets
- credits with no redemption maze
- time with someone interesting

**Side event.** A dinner, a run, a community meetup in the margins of the conference. Twenty right people beat 400 badge scans for ecosystem and pipeline objectives, and it is almost worthless for awareness. Often available without any sponsorship tier at all, which makes the fee the small part: the evening costs you whoever has to be sharp on the floor the next morning.

**Workshop or lab.** Ninety minutes of hands-on work on a real problem, product included but not the subject: attendees self-select, complete something, and leave with working code. Needs a tested environment, a fallback for venue wi-fi, and a curriculum written weeks ahead - reuse one you already have rather than writing it for a single event.

**Scholarship or diversity fund.** Money that sends attendees who could not otherwise come. Buys goodwill and stage-level thanks, produces no leads by design, and is never a substitute for an activation that carried a pipeline target.

## Staffing rhythm

Coverage should follow attention, not hall hours.

| Event type | Heavy staffing                                                                         | Skeleton crew                               |
| ---------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------- |
| Conference | breaks between sessions, opening reception, first hour after lunch                     | during keynotes, last hour of the final day |
| Hackathon  | kickoff and team formation, the evening build peak, the hours before submission, demos | overnight, meal times, the mid-event lull   |
| Meetup     | the 30 minutes before the talk and the hour after                                      | during the talk                             |

Rotate people off the floor. A tired engineer gives worse answers than no engineer, and the conversation that matters is as likely to happen at 16:40 as at 10:00.

## Staff brief

Cover before the doors open, in one page:

- The single objective, and the qualification bar and next-step definition in the exact words used in the log.
- What the audience is building this week, and the three questions they will most likely ask.
- The demo path, its five-minute win, and what to do when it breaks.
- The line between helping and pitching: help first, offer the product only when it answers the problem in front of you.
- Consent script for any contact capture, and what happens to the data afterwards.
- Code of conduct, and who to escalate an incident to.
- Who logs conversations, and when (end of each shift, not end of the event).

## Booth conversation examples

Constructed for illustration - copy the shape, not the specifics; no real event's transcript is quoted here.

**Works.** An attendee mentions their deployment pipeline takes forty minutes. The staffer asks what runs in those forty minutes, spots that the test matrix is serialised, sketches the fix on the attendee's own laptop (with or without the product) and only then says which part the product would take over. They ask whether it would help to look at the real repo next week, log the conversation as qualified with "call Thursday, sending the config we sketched", and send exactly that on Wednesday.

**Fails.** An attendee walks past. The staffer offers a t-shirt in exchange for a badge scan, opens with the funding announcement and the feature list, does not ask what the attendee works on, and hands over a QR code to a generic demo page.

The scan enters a nurture sequence that references a conversation that never happened. Two hundred of these produce a full spreadsheet, zero opportunities, and an audience that avoids the booth next year.

The difference is a question about the attendee's work asked before anything about the product.

## Follow-up sequences

- **Within 48 hours** - personal message to every qualified conversation, referencing the specific problem discussed and delivering whatever was promised. No template, no batch.
- **Winners and standout projects (hackathons)** - congratulations, an offer to feature the project with permission, extended access, and an introduction to whoever internally can actually help.
- **Everyone who opted in** - one short message: thanks, the two or three resources most relevant to the event's theme, an invitation to the community. No hard sell, no automatic addition to a sales sequence.
- **30 days later** - check in on the projects and evaluations that were live at the event; this is where hackathon and workshop contacts either become users or go quiet.
- **Never** - importing an attendee list nobody consented to, or following up with a sequence that ignores what was discussed.

# Event qualification scorecard

Contents: evidence request → scoring grid → worked examples → portfolio plan template.

## Evidence request

Send this before discussing price. What comes back - and how fast - is itself a signal.

> Subject: Sponsorship evaluation - [event name] [year]
>
> We are evaluating [event] for our [year] developer-event plan and need a few things to price it internally:
>
> 1. Attendee breakdown by role, seniority and company size for the last edition (actuals, not projections).
> 2. Regional split of attendees.
> 3. Last edition's post-event report, including returning-sponsor rate.
> 4. Number of sponsors at each level, and the floor plan.
> 5. The full package sheet: booth or table specification, passes included, what contact data sponsors receive and under which consent, how session and workshop slots are allocated, and which surfaces are sold separately.
> 6. Contract and add-on deadlines, payment terms.
> 7. Code of conduct and the sponsor-specific rules attached to it.
>
> Happy to sign an NDA if any of it is confidential.

Missing answers are not neutral. No demographic actuals means nobody measured; no post-event report means no sponsor asked last year.

## Scoring grid

Score each row 0-5 against **the objective chosen in step 1**, not in the abstract. Weights below suit a pipeline or adoption objective; for an awareness objective, raise Reach to 3 and lower Decision access to 1.

| Criterion                   | Weight | 0-1                                                   | 3                            | 5                                                                |
| --------------------------- | ------ | ----------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------- |
| ICP overlap                 | 3      | audience holds a different problem                    | adjacent roles, some overlap | the exact role you named in the interview dominates              |
| Decision access             | 2      | students or pure hobbyists (for a pipeline objective) | practitioners who influence  | practitioners plus their budget holders                          |
| Hands-on path               | 2      | logo only                                             | booth demo possible          | workshop, prize track or integration inside what attendees build |
| Organizer track record      | 2      | first edition, no data                                | 2-3 editions, partial data   | long history, actuals published, sponsors return                 |
| Sponsor density             | 1      | crowded hall, competitors entrenched                  | typical density              | few sponsors, or a niche you own                                 |
| Staffing feasibility        | 2      | nobody credible can travel                            | reachable with strain        | local team or an easy trip for the right people                  |
| Cost per reachable attendee | 2      | far above your other options                          | comparable                   | clearly below, after full costs                                  |
| Compounding                 | 1      | one-off event                                         | annual, audience turns over  | annual, same audience returns and remembers                      |

Max 75. Read the total as a rank, never as a verdict: an event scoring 60 with no staffing available is still a no, and any 0 on ICP overlap ends the evaluation regardless of total.

## Worked examples

**Strong - regional cloud-native conference, 900 attendees, third edition.** Platform and SRE audience with published role actuals (62% engineers, 18% architects, 12% managers); the product is a platform tool they already have the problem for. ICP 5×3, decision access 4×2, hands-on 4×2 (workshop slot offered), track record 5×2, density 3×1, staffing 5×2 (two-hour train ride, three engineers available), cost 4×2, compounding 4×1 → **63/75**. Decision: sponsor at a mid tier plus the workshop add-on; skip the party sponsorship.

**Weak - 6,000-attendee general developer expo, first edition in a new city.**

- Attendance projected, not measured
- Role mix unknown
- 80 sponsors
- A booth costs more than the regional event's entire package
- The only staff who could go are two field marketers

ICP 2×3, decision access 2×2, hands-on 2×2, track record 1×2, density 1×1, staffing 1×2, cost 1×2, compounding 2×1 → **27/75**. Decision: decline, and record the reason so it is not rebought next year on the strength of the headcount.

The gap between the two is not size. It is that the first event can answer questions about its audience and the second cannot.

## Portfolio plan template

```markdown
# Developer event sponsorship plan - [year]

## Objective and budget

Primary objective: [awareness | adoption | pipeline | ecosystem | recruiting]
Total budget (fully loaded): [amount] · Allocated: [amount] · Reserve: [amount, 15-25%]
Staffing ceiling: [people × days available across the year]

## Committed events

| Event | Date | Deadline | Objective | Model / tier | Fully loaded cost | Threshold (cost per qualified conversation, min count) | Owner |
| ----- | ---- | -------- | --------- | ------------ | ----------------- | ------------------------------------------------------ | ----- |

## Declined, with reason

| Event | Score | Reason declined |
| ----- | ----- | --------------- |

## Reserve policy

[What the unallocated share is for, and who can release it.]

## Review cadence

[Post-event review within two weeks; portfolio review at the budget date.]
```

# Published sponsorship price ladders

Contents: what these numbers are → two published ladders → structural rules they prove → negative example → building your own band table.

## What these numbers are

Real prices, published by the organizers themselves, for two US developer conferences in 2026. They exist here because almost every other prospectus says "contact us", which leaves a first-time sponsor with no sense of scale at all.

They are **anchors, not benchmarks**. Prices move by year, region, event size and business model, and a vendor-run mega-conference is a different market from a foundation conference. Check the current prospectus of the event in front of you before quoting any figure to anyone; use these only to know whether a quote you have been given is in a normal range or an unusual one.

## PSF / PyCon US 2026

Source: PSF sponsorship prospectus, February 2026 edition, linked from `us.pycon.org/2026/sponsorship/`. One integrated yearly package covering PyCon US, PyPI and python.org. PyCon US 2026: 2,500+ attendees, 50+ expo booths.

| Package        | Price (USD/year) | Passes | Expo booth |
| -------------- | ---------------- | ------ | ---------- |
| Visionary      | $160,000         | 25     | 20x30 ft   |
| Sustainability | $99,000          | 22     | 20x30 ft   |
| Maintaining    | $65,000          | 18     | 20x20 ft   |
| Contributing   | $33,500          | 15     | 10x20 ft   |
| Supporting     | $16,750          | 10     | 10x20 ft   |
| Partner        | $11,500          | 5      | 10x10 ft   |
| Participating  | $4,250           | 2      | -          |
| Associate      | $1,750           | -      | -          |

Add-ons, priced separately:

- travel grant $2,500
- PyLadies auction $3,500
- coffee break $5,000
- opening reception $8,000
- wi-fi $8,000
- lanyard $8,000 (already sold in the February edition)
- one-hour pre-conference sponsor presentation, available as an add-on at nearly every tier
- AI track lead sponsor $75,000
- security track lead sponsor $45,000

Each conference pass is stated at "$899 value", so pass count is a subtractable line: Partner's five passes account for roughly $4,495 of its $11,500. No lead retrieval, badge scanning or attendee-data benefit appears anywhere in the document.

## DjangoCon US 2026

Source: `2026.djangocon.us/sponsors/information/`.

| Tier     | Price (USD) | Free passes       | Exhibit table         |
| -------- | ----------- | ----------------- | --------------------- |
| Diamond  | $20,000     | 8 (+8 at 10% off) | yes, prime position   |
| Platinum | $10,000     | 8 (+8 discounted) | yes, space permitting |
| Gold     | $6,000      | 4 (+4 discounted) | yes, space permitting |
| Silver   | $3,500      | 2 (+2 discounted) | -                     |
| Bronze   | $2,300      | 1 (+1 discounted) | -                     |

Diamond alone carries stage time: a 10-minute slot after the keynote, capped at three sponsors. A 90-minute hands-on sponsored workshop is a **$12,000 add-on** - more than the Platinum tier. Logo on all talk videos costs $1,000 for Gold and below; a sponsor slot in the invitation email costs $3,500. No attendee data, no job board.

## Structural rules these prices prove

1. **The booth sits behind a price floor.** At PyCon US, nothing below $11,500 includes floor space. Decide whether you need a booth before reading the tier list, because that answer sets your minimum spend, not your budget.
2. **Hands-on time is the most expensive thing on the sheet.** DjangoCon's workshop add-on outprices two of its five tiers, and PyCon's track sponsorships outprice six of its eight packages. That is the market pricing attention correctly - plan for it instead of being surprised by it.
3. **Named surfaces are cheap relative to tiers, and they sell out.** $8,000 buys the lanyard everyone wears; the same $8,000 buys roughly half of one mid tier. Two of PyCon's best surfaces were already marked filled in a February document for a May event.
4. **Community and foundation events do not sell contact data or main-stage content at any price.** Both prospectuses are silent on lead retrieval, and neither sells a keynote.
5. **Passes are money.** A tier that includes ten passes at a stated $899 each has already returned most of a small tier's price - if you can actually staff ten bodies, which is a separate question.

## Negative example - the tier-name trap

**What goes wrong.** A team benchmarks three events by tier name: "Gold is $6,000 here, $25,000 there, so the second event is four times better." They buy Gold at both, get a table at one and a wall logo at the other, no workshop at either, and cannot explain the difference in outcomes afterwards.

**What to do instead.** Build the comparison from line items and price the ones your objective needs. For an adoption objective, that is:

- hands-on slot
- booth or table
- passes you can staff
- lead capture if any exists

Divide the fee for those items alone by the audience you can realistically reach, and ignore the tier names entirely. The DjangoCon sheet makes the point: Silver ($3,500) plus the video-logo add-on ($1,000) is a different product from Gold ($6,000), and the right choice depends only on whether talk videos matter to you.

## Building your own band table

Prices in your ecosystem, region and year are the only ones that matter, so collect them once a year and keep them:

1. Pull the current prospectus for every event on the shortlist plus the three largest events you will never sponsor - the latter set the ceiling.
2. Record, per event:
   - cheapest tier that includes floor presence
   - cheapest tier that includes any hands-on or stage time
   - cost of the single add-on that best reaches your audience
   - pass count and any stated pass value
   - contract deadline
   - published discounts
3. Note where a price is unpublished, and treat "contact us" as a data point about how the event sells, not as a gap.
4. Re-collect every year. Every figure on this page carries its source and date for exactly that reason - an undated price is a guess in a year's time.

# Sponsorship cost and ROI model

Contents: cost worksheet → metric definitions → tracking mechanics → worked calculation → one-pager template.

## Fully loaded cost worksheet

| Line                     | Notes                                                                                       |
| ------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Sponsorship fee          | after any published multi-event or membership discount                                      |
| Add-ons                  | workshop slot, branded surface, scholarship fund, extra passes                              |
| Booth build and shipping | including storage and reprints between editions                                             |
| Swag and print           | count what actually gets handed out, not what gets ordered                                  |
| Prizes and credits       | hackathons; include the cost of honouring credit awards                                     |
| Travel and accommodation | per person, including travel days                                                           |
| Staff time               | loaded daily cost × (prep + travel + on-site + follow-up) days, per person                  |
| Opportunity cost         | what those engineer-days would otherwise have shipped - note it even if you do not price it |

Staff time is the line teams omit and the line that most often doubles the total. A modest fee with four people travelling for three days is an expensive sponsorship.

## Metric definitions

**Qualified conversation** - a discussion with someone who (a) has the problem the product solves, (b) holds or influences the decision, and (c) agreed to a named next step. All three, judged by the person who had the conversation, logged the same way at every booth hour.

**Cost per qualified conversation (CPQC)** - fully loaded cost ÷ qualified conversations. The only figure that compares a hackathon, a community day and a mega-conference.

**Event cohort** - everyone who arrived through the event's own URL, code, workshop signup or consented scan, tagged once and never merged into a generic campaign.

Per objective:

| Objective  | Primary metric                                                                                    | Supporting signals                             | Do not claim                                    |
| ---------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------- |
| Awareness  | branded search and direct-traffic lift vs. pre-event baseline, in the event's region or ecosystem | mentions, session attendance, booth traffic    | attributed revenue                              |
| Adoption   | cohort activations still active at 30/60/90 days                                                  | signups on the event URL, workshop completions | activations from anyone who merely saw the logo |
| Pipeline   | opportunities and influenced pipeline traced to logged conversations                              | qualified conversations, meetings booked       | sourced-revenue claims a CRM cannot support     |
| Ecosystem  | partner conversations that reached a scheduled next meeting                                       | intro requests, joint-content agreements       | ecosystem "momentum"                            |
| Recruiting | candidates entering the hiring funnel                                                             | CV opt-ins, interview requests                 | anything mixed into product metrics             |

## Tracking mechanics

- One event-specific URL and one promo or credit code per event. Never reuse across events; a shared code makes every number unattributable.
- Capture a **pre-event baseline** of the primary metric one to four weeks before, so a lift can be claimed at all.
- Where badge scanning exists, scan only with a purpose the attendee heard out loud, and expect a bounded record (typically name, title, company, work email - not phone).
- Where scanning does not exist, capture consent explicitly: an opt-in draw, a workshop signup, a QR to the event landing page. A smaller clean list beats a larger invented one.
- Conversation log, one row per conversation: name · company · role · problem discussed · qualified (y/n) · agreed next step · owner · follow-up sent (date).
- Follow up within 48 hours, on the substance of the actual conversation. A generic sequence erases the credibility the conversation earned.
- Measure at 30 / 60 / 90 days, plus one pipeline check a full sales cycle out.

## Worked calculation

Same event, two outcomes.

**Judged well.** Fee 8,000 + workshop add-on 2,000 + travel and hotel for 3 people 4,500 + swag and print 1,200 + staff time (3 people × 4 days × 900) 10,800 = **26,500 fully loaded**. Threshold set before signing: CPQC ≤ 600 and at least 35 qualified conversations, derived from a blended acquisition cost of roughly 900 per new customer at a 40% conversation-to-opportunity rate.

Result: 52 qualified conversations → CPQC 510; 19 opportunities at 90 days. Verdict: renew, and buy the workshop again.

**Judged badly.** The same event reported as "1,400 badge scans, 3,000 stickers, great buzz". No baseline, no qualification bar, no threshold - so the number cannot be compared to last year, to another event, or to anything the company could have done with 26,500 instead. Nothing in it survives a budget review, and the following year the sponsorship is renewed or cut on whoever argues loudest.

The difference is entirely decisions made before the event, not measurement done after it.

## Per-event one-pager template

```markdown
# [Event] [year] - sponsorship one-pager

**Objective (one):** [ ] · **Owner:** [ ] · **Contract deadline:** [ ]

## Audience evidence

[Role mix, seniority, region, source of the numbers.]

## Package

Model / tier: [ ] · Included: [booth/table, passes, contact data, speaking route]
Add-ons bought: [ ] · Negotiated extras: [ ]

## Activation

[Chosen activation, why it beat the alternatives, staffing roster and rhythm.]

## Tracking

Event URL: [ ] · Code: [ ] · Baseline captured: [date, values]
Qualification bar: [ ] · Next-step definition: [ ]

## Threshold

Fully loaded cost: [ ] · Target CPQC: [ ] · Minimum conversations: [ ]

## Result (post-event)

Conversations: [ ] · CPQC: [ ] · 30/60/90: [ ]
**Verdict:** renew | renegotiate [what changes] | drop [why]
```

---
name: developer-event-sponsorship
description: Builds a developer-event sponsorship plan - which conferences, meetups and hackathons to sponsor, at which tier, with which on-site activation, and how to prove the money worked. Use whenever a DevRel lead, developer marketer or founder mentions sponsoring a conference, booth cost, a sponsorship tier or package negotiation, splitting an event budget across events, hackathon sponsorship, or event ROI - even if they only ask "is this booth worth it". Do NOT use for organizing your own event (samber/developer-relations-skills@developer-meetup-program), getting a talk accepted (samber/developer-relations-skills@conference-cfp-submission), or sponsoring open-source projects.
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: Samuel Berthe
  version: "1.0.1"
---

# Developer Event Sponsorship

You decide where a company's developer-event money goes: which events, at what depth, doing what on site, and what the company can honestly claim in return.

Read every package line by line, because tier names carry no meaning across events. A "Gold" at a foundation mega-conference and a "Gold" at a volunteer-run community day differ on the only things that matter: whether contact data exists, whether a stage slot is for sale, which surfaces are sold separately.

Developers read a sponsorship as a statement about the company. Trade-show behavior at a community event costs more credibility than the logo buys - that trade governs every activation choice in step 6.

Route the user elsewhere when this is the wrong table:

- Running their own meetup, conference or hackathon → `samber/developer-relations-skills@developer-meetup-program`, or see-also `samber/dev-event-organizer-skills` for the organizer craft.
- Getting a talk accepted → `samber/developer-relations-skills@conference-cfp-submission`.
- Funding open-source projects and maintainers → `samber/developer-relations-skills@oss-sponsors-brand-strategy`.
- Splitting the whole DevRel budget across pillars → `samber/developer-relations-skills@devrel-budget-allocation`.

## Interview

Ask one question at a time, multiple-choice where you can. Stop once you know the objective, the budget and the staffing ceiling; confirm the rest as the plan takes shape.

**Memory: Store a few info about the current task or project context. When memory lives in a file, use `devrel-context.md`; if a different memory system is in use, rely on that instead. Separate task info in different sections. Remove finished tasks. Add a date to a task; no date for general project context. Some interview responses may differ between 2 tasks.**
1. Who is asking, and whose budget pays - DevRel, developer marketing, field marketing, engineering, or a founder?
2. What should this money change: awareness in a new ecosystem, product adoption, sales pipeline, partner/ecosystem relationships, or engineering recruiting? Rank your top two.
3. Who buys your product - a developer paying with a card, a developer who champions it to a buyer, or a buyer who never touches it?
4. Who must be in the room: which roles, seniority, ecosystems and regions? Name the person you want your staff talking to.
5. How much per year, and is that the fee only or everything (travel, swag, staff time)? When is the budget decided?
6. What is your effort ceiling: how many people can you send who can debug a stranger's code, how many days each across the year, and who answers the follow-up in the two weeks after each event?
7. By what date must the result be visible - a board review, a funding round, a launch? This is not the contract deadline; ask for both.
8. Do you want a one-off win at one event this year, or a presence that compounds across editions?
9. Which events are already on the table - names, dates, deadlines, quoted tiers? Which did you sponsor before, and what happened?
10. What baseline data exists: web analytics, signup attribution, CRM, past event reports?
11. What are the constraints - data-protection rules on collected contacts, recruiting goals, brand rules, geographies, competitors you would rather not stand beside?
12. Who signs, and what is the earliest contract deadline you are facing?

Questions 6-8 decide the rankings in steps 3, 4 and 6, so ask them before recommending anything and say which answer moved which option:

- A near date for the result promotes the meetup and community rungs in step 4 and the help-desk booth in step 6, and deletes the workshop outright - a quarter of preparation does not fit inside a deadline two months out. It also promotes buying an add-on at an event already contracted over adding a new event.
- A compounding mandate promotes the ecosystem-anchored portfolio in step 3, the repeated event over the one-and-done, and the workshop in step 6.
- A low effort ceiling deletes the workshop and the side event, caps step 3 at the shapes one team can staff, and makes the booth's full hall hours the binding constraint on how many events the year can hold.

If your harness has persistent memory, store the objective, the annual budget split, the per-event thresholds and the post-event verdicts. Sponsorships renew annually; the next session must not re-derive the portfolio from scratch.

## Step 1 - Fix one primary objective

A sponsorship serves one primary mandate. Everything downstream (event choice, tier, activation, metric) is decided by it, and a plan that keeps two primaries produces a report nobody can act on.

This objective table draws on Phil Leggetter's AAARRRP goal mapping, which places events and conference talks in the Awareness/Acquisition family - a corrective to pipeline-first sponsorship pitches.

This table carries no efficiency ranking, deliberately: the objective is a mandate handed to you, not an option chosen for its ratio, and ranking the rows would tell a recruiting team to chase pipeline. Every ranking further down is computed against whichever row lands here.

| Objective  | What the money buys                                         | Primary metric                                                                   | Events that fit                                             |
| ---------- | ----------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------- |
| Awareness  | first contact with an ecosystem that does not know you      | branded search, direct traffic and unaided mention lift vs. a pre-event baseline | large horizontal conferences, student hackathons            |
| Adoption   | hands on the product during the event                       | activations from the event cohort still active at 30/60/90 days                  | workshop-friendly events, hackathons, ecosystem conferences |
| Pipeline   | qualified conversations with people who can buy or champion | conversations → opportunities → influenced pipeline                              | practitioner and enterprise-heavy conferences               |
| Ecosystem  | partner and integration conversations                       | partner conversations that reached a scheduled next meeting                      | vendor-neutral foundation events, ecosystem summits         |
| Recruiting | candidate contact                                           | candidates entering the hiring funnel                                            | student hackathons, language-community conferences          |

Who buys changes both the objective and the measurement:

- **Developer-purchased products (self-serve, card payment, individual or team plan)** behave like consumer marketing. Success is measurable in-product (event-specific signup URL, promo credit, activation curve) and the follow-up is a product invitation, not a sales sequence. Awareness and adoption are the realistic mandates.
- **Enterprise-sold products** hinge on a conversation that outlives the event by two to four quarters. The attendee is often a champion, not a signer, so pipeline claims must ride on the CRM, and the event's contribution is influence rather than source.
- **Both motions in one company** need the objective set per event, not per year: the hackathon is awareness, the enterprise conference is pipeline. Say which is which in the plan.

## Step 2 - Qualify every candidate event

Headcount is the least informative number in a prospectus. Demand this evidence before pricing anything, and treat an organizer who cannot supply it as the answer:

1. Audience composition - role mix, seniority, company size, buying influence. Not a total.
2. Geography and travel mix.
3. Track record - prior editions, returning-sponsor rate, and last edition's post-event report with actual numbers.
4. Sponsor density and which competitors have already committed.
5. Exactly what the package includes (see step 4).
6. Program balance - technical content versus sponsor content.
7. Follow-up rights - whether contact data exists at all, and under which consent.

Organizers who run a healthy event already publish most of this. The PSF's PyCon US 2026 prospectus prints attendee count, job-function split (53.9% developer), industry split and company-size bands before it prints a price - that is the evidence standard to hold every organizer to, not an unusual courtesy.

Score each event against the objective rather than against other events' prices. [references/event-scorecard.md](./references/event-scorecard.md) holds the weighted scorecard, a worked example of a strong and a weak event scored side by side, and the request email that extracts the evidence above.

Walk away on:

- unverifiable demographics
- a first-time organizer making large promises
- a prospectus that sells sponsor benefits harder than the attendee experience
- an attendee list offered as a deliverable
- deadline pressure arriving before the audience data does

## Step 3 - Brainstorm the portfolio, then choose one

Size the envelope before drawing the shortlist. One published reference point exists: events took a mean 41.1% of DevRel program budget in _State of Developer Relations 2024_ (DevRel.Agency, September 2024), the largest of four categories. Use it only as evidence that events historically dominate DevRel spend - 47 respondents answered that question and their shares sum to 104.5% - never as a target to hit.

Then enter brainstorming mode before committing to any single event. Sketch **two or three candidate portfolios** for the year, each with its allocation split, the staffing it consumes, and what it deliberately fails at. Recommend one, explain why the others lose, and get explicit agreement before negotiating anything.

Four shapes are worth drawing from, ranked by value per unit of effort. Effort is staff-days across the year, travel overhead, preparation reusable between events, and follow-up capacity after each one - never the fee. Value is qualified conversations that continue after the event, plus the recognition carried into the next edition.

- efficiency: ecosystem-anchored > flagship-led > farm-team > regional spread
- value: flagship-led > ecosystem-anchored > farm-team > regional spread
- effort: regional spread > farm-team > flagship-led == ecosystem-anchored

No compliance-cost line at this altitude: contracts, consent and code-of-conduct obligations are signed per event in step 4, and a portfolio shape commits to none of them.

- **Ecosystem-anchored** - every event sits inside one technology community. Leads the efficiency line because the demo, the staff brief, the prepared answers and the follow-up relationships are built once and reused at every event; credibility compounds fast. Effort: a quarter of preparation, then a standing job for whoever owns that community. Fails the moment the strategy needs a second ecosystem.
- **Flagship-led** - one deep sponsorship plus small presences elsewhere. Buys the most conversations and the strongest recognition of any shape, because depth of presence is what a developer audience notices. Effort: a quarter of preparation and a standing job for the week itself. Fails at geographic coverage, and starts cold everywhere the flagship is not.
- **Farm-team** - student hackathons for long-horizon awareness plus one practitioner conference for near-term proof. Two objectives and two metrics on one budget, which is also its cost: two follow-up motions and two measurement systems, each paid in full. Effort: the preparation of the flagship shape, doubled, and two owners.
- **Regional spread** - many small local events. Cheap per event, good for a field team, and the only shape that reaches developers who never travel. Effort: travel overhead multiplied by the event count, with follow-up fragmented across as many owners. Rarely reaches decision-makers.

- Justify the effort tie: flagship-led and ecosystem-anchored concentrate the same people on the same preparation for the same total number of days. The ecosystem shape spreads those days across more editions without adding any, which is why it wins on efficiency and not on effort.
- Default to ecosystem-anchored, and move to flagship-led when one event demonstrably holds the audience the objective names, or when recognition inside a single ecosystem is already established and the mandate is to be seen beyond it.
- What this order starves: the regional spread, the only shape that gives a field team local coverage. Promote it when go-to-market is regional and the staff already live in those cities - a team travelling nowhere new turns its worst axis, travel overhead, into near-zero.
- Delete the farm-team, rather than ranking it last, whenever one person owns event measurement: two objectives with one owner produce one metric and two excuses.
- Re-rank against what you already know about this team: an ecosystem where the company is already a known name, a staff roster clustered in one region, or an existing workshop curriculum all move a shape up before the default order applies.

Keep a slice of the annual budget unallocated - 15-25% is this skill's default, not an industry figure - because the best-fit event is rarely the one visible in January.

## Step 4 - Choose the model and the tier

Read the prospectus for three clauses before looking at the price:

- what contact data the sponsor receives
- how a stage slot is obtained
- which surfaces are sold separately

Package models return different amounts of qualified conversation per staff-day, which is the one axis a price sheet never shows. Effort below is people on site × days plus the preparation and follow-up the model generates; compliance cost is the review a model triggers and how little of it can be undone once signed.

- efficiency: meetup / user group > community conference > foundation or large vendor conference > hackathon > in-kind
- value (qualified conversations that continue): foundation or large vendor conference > hackathon > community conference > meetup / user group > in-kind
- effort: hackathon > foundation or large vendor conference > community conference > meetup / user group > in-kind
- compliance cost: foundation or large vendor conference > hackathon > in-kind > community conference > meetup / user group

| Package model                               | What money buys                                                                                                                                       | What it never buys                                     | Effort                                                                                                     | How to win there                                                                                              |
| ------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Meetup / user group                         | one evening in front of a small, high-intent local audience                                                                                           | scale                                                  | an hour of preparation, one evening, local staff                                                           | sponsor a series rather than one night; let the host keep editorial control                                   |
| Community / volunteer conference            | presence among peers, a table, passes, a brief timed pitch                                                                                            | attendee contact data, badge scanning, purchased talks | two technical people for the length of the event; opt-in follow-up only, so the follow-up list stays small | send people who help; capture interest by opt-in only; submit to the CFP separately                           |
| Foundation / large vendor conference        | booth space, passes, consented badge-scan data, à-la-carte surfaces (wi-fi, lanyard, scholarships, activation zones), published multi-event discounts | main-stage session slots, editorial content            | a standing job for several people across several days, plus the follow-up that scan volume creates         | buy a lower tier plus the one add-on that reaches your audience; logo size scales with price, surfaces do not |
| Hackathon                                   | mentorship access, a prize track, workshop slots, product placement in what gets built                                                                | judging outcomes, guaranteed adoption                  | a standing job across nights and a weekend, judging included                                               | frame the prize around the problem, not the product; staff the crunch hours                                   |
| In-kind (credits, hardware, infrastructure) | reach at low cash cost for an early-stage vendor                                                                                                      | predictable visibility                                 | near-zero on site, a week spent pinning deliverables in writing                                            | pin every deliverable in writing; in-kind visibility drifts unless specified                                  |

- Read the efficiency line as ordering models, not events: it decides where a marginal staff-day goes when two candidate events both survived step 2.
- What this order starves: the foundation or large vendor conference - top on value, second on effort, so a ratio picks the meetup every time, and a year of meetups never reaches an ecosystem that does not know you. Promote it when the objective is awareness in a new ecosystem, or when the buyers you named in the interview travel to one event and no other.
- Delete in-kind, rather than ranking it last, unless the company is early-stage and cash-constrained. Elsewhere it buys visibility nobody committed to, at the price of a contract negotiation with no money in it.
- Read the compliance line as the review triggered and the reversibility spent:
  - a large conference's contract is signed a quarter ahead and cannot be unwound, and its consented badge data needs a data-protection review before anyone may use it
  - a hackathon's prize rules and judging criteria are published and fixed the moment entries open
  - a community conference asks you to sign its sponsor code of conduct and holds no data at all
  - a meetup is a handshake
- This ranking is a default, not a law, and it shifts with who executes it. Re-rank when the team already attends an event for other reasons, when the product demos badly in five minutes, or when a local user group is run by someone the company already works with.

Inside a chosen event the tier is its own menu. Efficiency: lower tier plus the one add-on that reaches your audience > cheapest tier clearing the booth price floor > logo-only tier > top tier.

Effort scales with what a tier obliges you to staff rather than with what it costs: ten passes and a large booth are a staffing commitment, and a booth nobody can staff for the full hall hours is worth less than a workshop. Check for eligibility-gated startup or end-user tiers before picking a rung, since they are the same product cheaper, for reasons unrelated to audience quality.

Work back from the calendar: three mechanics are decided there rather than at the negotiating table.

- Contract and add-on deadlines: large events close roughly a quarter out - KubeCon NA 2026 required signed contracts by 14 August for a November event - so put the decision in the fiscal quarter before the event it affects.
- Multi-event discounts: check for published ones before inventing an ask, since some marketplaces fix them rather than negotiate them (CNCF: 3% for one event, 5% for two signed together, 8% for three or more).
- Branded surfaces: move early, since the best ones sell out months ahead and are the cheap half of the lower-tier-plus-add-on play.

Where published prices exist, read them before accepting a quote. [references/published-price-ladders.md](./references/published-price-ladders.md) carries the two 2026 prospectuses that print full price lists, the booth price floor they reveal, what a hands-on slot really costs, and the tier-name comparison trap to avoid.

## Step 5 - Negotiate

Packages move, especially for early commitment, multi-event or multi-year deals, off-peak editions, growing events, and sponsors who bring something the organizer wants (a workshop, a mentor pool, a scholarship fund).

The asks compete for one budget that is not money: the number of things an organizer says yes to before the conversation turns. Spend it in this order.

- efficiency: previous edition's post-event report > extra staff passes > timing of lead-data delivery > placement on a specific high-traffic surface instead of a generic logo tier > a workshop or demo-theatre slot > permission to publish content from the event > a written attendance estimate with a remedy if the event undershoots badly
- value (qualified conversations that continue): workshop or demo-theatre slot > high-traffic surface > extra staff passes > lead-data timing > permission to publish > attendance remedy > post-event report

The report leads because it costs nothing to ask, arrives before signature, and can still cancel the deal. What this order starves is the attendance remedy and the workshop slot, the two hardest asks.

Make the remedy your first ask at any first edition, where an unmet estimate is the whole risk. Make the workshop your first ask whenever step 6 chose it. The ordering sequences the asks; it never shortens the list.

Never buy a keynote's content, a judging outcome, an attendee list the attendees never consented to, or an implied speaking slot at an event that runs a CFP. None of these is a gray area to probe in negotiation: each is an ethics failure, and each becomes a story that travels faster than the sponsorship does.

## Step 6 - Design the on-site activation

Spend commits immediately after this choice, so brainstorm **two or three activation options** for the chosen tier, name the trade-off in each, recommend one, and validate it before anything is bought.

Value here is qualified developer conversations that continue after the event, never badge scans. Effort is staff-days on site, preparation before it, follow-up capacity after it, and opportunity cost - the same two engineers cannot run a workshop and staff a booth.

- efficiency: help-desk booth > prize track > side event > workshop
- value: workshop > help-desk booth > side event > prize track
- effort: workshop > side event > help-desk booth > prize track
- compliance cost: prize track > side event > help-desk booth == workshop

Effort in magnitudes:

- the booth costs an hour of preparation and then a standing job for the hall hours
- the prize track costs a week to frame and procure, and borrows mentoring hours you were staffing anyway
- the side event costs a week of guest-list and venue work plus an evening that also costs you the next morning
- the workshop costs a quarter of preparation and takes your two best engineers off the floor for its whole slot

- Default to the booth as a help desk: technical staff who debug a stranger's code, a demo the attendee drives, a quick win within reach (the five-minute bar is this skill's default). That pattern is practitioner convention, not a measured result - but it is the behavior developer audiences reward, and the pitch-first booth is the one they punish.
- Justify the compliance tie: a booth and a workshop each collect contact details under one consent line, reviewed once and reused all year, and trigger nothing else. The prize track tops that axis because prize promotions are regulated in some jurisdictions, judging criteria are published and fixed once entries open, and prize value can be reportable. A side event you host carries the venue contract, the alcohol, and a code of conduct the conference organizer is not enforcing on your behalf.
- What this order starves: the workshop and the side event, the two deepest engagements available and the two most staff-intensive, so a ratio picks the booth every round. Promote the workshop when a curriculum already exists - that alone collapses its preparation from a quarter to a week and moves it to the top of the efficiency line. Promote it too when the product cannot show a win in five minutes and the booth's whole premise fails. Promote the side event when the objective is ecosystem and the twenty names already sit in the CRM, or when the team was travelling to this event anyway, which drops its marginal cost to the evening alone.
- Delete rather than demote:
  - the prize track at any event with no build phase
  - the workshop where the package sells no hands-on slot or nobody can be spared for its preparation
  - both the workshop and the side event when only one person is travelling, since a team of one can staff exactly one thing
- The scholarship or diversity fund sits off this ladder on purpose. It buys goodwill and stage-level thanks and produces no conversations by design, so it has no value on this axis and ranking it would be false precision. Choose it deliberately as an awareness or employer-brand purchase, or leave it out.

[references/activation-playbooks.md](./references/activation-playbooks.md) details each activation in that order - staffing rhythm per event type, the staff brief, and a positive/negative example pair of booth conversations.

Two rules bind every activation. Staff conversations toward the qualification bar defined in step 7 rather than toward badge count. And where a live demo is part of the activation, design its failure plan with `samber/developer-relations-skills@developer-live-demo-design` - a booth demo fails in front of the exact person you were trying to convince.

## Step 7 - Build the measurement plan before signing

Cost the sponsorship fully - fee, add-ons, booth build, shipping, swag, prizes, travel and accommodation per person, and loaded staff time for preparation, travel, on-site days and follow-up. Staff time is the line most teams omit and the line that most often doubles the total.

Then fix the threshold **before** signing: a target cost per qualified conversation, plus a minimum conversation count that makes the trip worth staffing. Derive the target from the current blended acquisition cost rather than from the sponsorship fee.

Only one unit survives comparison across a hackathon, a community day and a mega-conference: the qualified conversation - someone who has the problem, holds or influences the decision, and agrees to a named next step. Define the bar and the next step before the event and brief every staffer on both.

Route each logged conversation to the team that can use it, and name the destination in the log. Mary Thengvall's DevRel Qualified Lead (2019) gives the routing table:

| Conversation type            | Route to     |
| ---------------------------- | ------------ |
| Case-study material          | Marketing    |
| Feedback and beta candidates | Product      |
| Bugs                         | Engineering  |
| Partner interest             | Partnerships |
| Candidates                   | Recruiting   |
| Buyers                       | Sales        |

Most booth conversations are not sales leads, and defaulting them all to sales is what fills a CRM with records nobody works.

[references/sponsorship-roi-model.md](./references/sponsorship-roi-model.md) holds the cost worksheet, the metric definitions per objective, and the tracking mechanics (event-specific URLs and codes, baseline capture, consented capture where scanning does not exist, the conversation log shape). It also covers the 30/60/90 windows and a worked calculation with the same event judged well and badly.

## Step 8 - Review, then renew, renegotiate or drop

Run the review within two weeks, while the conversation log is still accurate, and write the verdict down where next year's budget cycle will find it:

- **Renew** - threshold met, staffing sustainable, audience unchanged.
- **Renegotiate** - right audience, wrong package: drop a tier and buy the add-on that produced the conversations, or trade the booth for a workshop.
- **Drop** - audience mismatch, or the same outcome is reachable elsewhere for less.

These three carry no efficiency ranking: the verdict is read off the threshold set in step 7, not chosen for its ratio. Ranking them would let the cheapest verdict win an argument the data already settled.

Judge a first edition against awareness-stage expectations and reserve the pipeline verdict for the second, since recognition and relationships compound across editions. That patience is not a license to renew an event that has missed its threshold twice.

## Pass threshold

The plan is finished when every event on it carries:

- one primary objective
- a fully loaded cost
- a target cost per qualified conversation
- a minimum conversation count
- a named owner for the follow-up

An event that cannot be given a threshold cannot be judged and should not be signed - say that out loud instead of softening it.

After the event, the sponsorship passes when it met its threshold on its own primary metric. Missing it triggers step 8's renegotiate or drop, not a search for a secondary metric that happens to look better.

## Invocation examples

- "Should we sponsor KubeCon next year?" → run the interview, then steps 1-2 on that single event, and answer with a threshold or a decline, never with a maybe.
- "We have €60k for developer events in 2027, what should we do with it?" → steps 1-3, deliver two or three candidate portfolios with the allocation split, recommend one.
- "They quoted us Gold at $18k, is that worth it?" → step 4 against the line items and `references/published_price_ladders.md`, then step 7's fully loaded cost before any verdict.
- "We're sponsoring a hackathon in six weeks, what do we do there?" → steps 6-7 only; the event is bought, so design the activation, the qualification bar and the tracking.
- "Was last year's conference worth it?" → step 8, using whatever cost and conversation data exists; if no threshold was set, say the question cannot be answered honestly and fix it for the next one.

## Failure modes

| Symptom                                 | Cause                                              | Fix                                                     |
| --------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------- |
| Big attendance, no useful conversations | event chosen on headcount, not composition         | re-qualify on role mix and buying influence (step 2)    |
| Booth ignored                           | non-technical staff, pitch-first posture           | staff with engineers, lead with help (step 6)           |
| Leads that never convert                | swag-for-scan capture with no qualification bar    | define the bar pre-event; capture fewer, better records |
| No verdict at renewal time              | no threshold and no baseline set before signing    | fix both in step 7, before the contract                 |
| Repeated one-off sponsorships           | portfolio never designed, events bought reactively | run step 3 once a year and keep a reserve               |
| Community backlash                      | trade-show mechanics at a community event          | read the three prospectus clauses in step 4 first       |
| Missed the good events                  | contracts close a quarter ahead of the event       | map deadlines during the interview, not after           |

## Output shape

Produce two artifacts:

- **Portfolio plan** - the year's events in a table (event, date, objective, model and tier, fully loaded cost, threshold, owner), the allocation split, the unallocated reserve, and the shortlist of events deliberately declined with the reason.
- **Per-event one-pager** - objective, audience evidence, package line items, negotiated extras, activation plan, staffing roster and rhythm, tracking setup, threshold, and the post-event verdict once it exists.

Templates for both are in [references/event-scorecard.md](./references/event-scorecard.md) and [references/sponsorship-roi-model.md](./references/sponsorship-roi-model.md).

## References

- [references/event-scorecard.md](./references/event-scorecard.md) - weighted qualification scorecard, worked strong/weak examples, organizer evidence request, portfolio plan template.
- [references/sponsorship-roi-model.md](./references/sponsorship-roi-model.md) - cost worksheet, metric definitions, tracking mechanics, worked ROI calculation, per-event one-pager template.
- [references/activation-playbooks.md](./references/activation-playbooks.md) - five activation types, staffing rhythms, staff brief, positive/negative booth examples, follow-up sequences.
- [references/published-price-ladders.md](./references/published-price-ladders.md) - sourced 2026 tier and add-on prices, the booth price floor, the tier-name comparison trap, and how to build your own yearly band table.
- See `samber/developer-relations-skills@conference-cfp-submission` for winning a stage slot the sponsorship cannot buy.
- See `samber/developer-relations-skills@developer-live-demo-design` for any demo that runs live at the booth or in a sponsored workshop.
- See `samber/developer-relations-skills@developer-meetup-program` for running your own recurring event instead of sponsoring someone else's.
- See `samber/developer-relations-skills@oss-sponsors-brand-strategy` for sponsoring open-source projects and maintainers.
- See `samber/developer-relations-skills@devrel-budget-allocation` for the split between events and the other DevRel pillars.
- See `samber/developer-relations-skills@devrel-metrics` for the program-level measurement framework these event metrics roll up into.