Call for Sponsorship

June 30, 2011 | Tag: » Sponsor

PyLadies needs your help getting women to DjangoCon. There are women who could really benefit from the experience.

Help us get more women to DjangoCon

What happens when you encourage a talented female Django developer to attend DjangoCon and then give her a free ticket? First she gets really excited:

|Why is @estherbester going to DjangoCon?|

Then she discovers a world of new opportunities. She gains the confidence to start open-sourcing reusable Django apps. She contributes to open-source Django projects, maybe even Django itself.

She proposes a talk the following year. PyLadies mentors her to help get her talk accepted. She gets accepted and presents on one of her open-source projects.

Her Django app turns out to be so useful that she gets asked to integrate her project into Django core during the sprints ;)

I counted about 5 women at DjangoCon last year. Let’s make this year different. Let’s aim to have 25 women. If there are 250 attendees, that’s 10% women.

How you can help

1. Email audreyr {at} pyladies.com. Say “I pledge to donate X amount to helping women get to DjangoCon.”

She’ll use this info to let a woman know ASAP that she should get her speaker proposal in before the deadline. Or to let a potential attendee start making plans.

2. We’ll send you an email with instructions about how to get the funds to us (probably PayPal or check). Plus background info from me about the woman whom you’re sponsoring, so that you know that this is for real.

How we decide who gets to go

Priority will be based on the following factors:

Genuine financial need
Desire to speak at DjangoCon, combined with Django expertise and speaking ability. Talented potential speakers get extra priority.
Contributions to open-source
Contributions to Python women’s advocacy efforts
Desire to attend
Impact that attendance will have on her life, especially for first-time attendees

You’ll receive:

an email report from us about the person you’re sponsoring, and why you made the right decision
a personal thank-you at DjangoCon from that person
your link listed on a page that we’ll be putting up for sponsors
your logo displayed on that page, if you donate substantially more than others (amount TBD) and/or better placement
a personal guarantee from me that the PyLadies and I will mentor the person you sponsored. We will help them through their Django career and put friendly pressure on them to contribute to open-source

In cases of extreme financial need, we’ll give the woman not just a ticket but help with travel, lodging, and/or food.

If you’re a woman reading this and could use assistance, email audreyr {at} pyladies {dot} com. We’ll do our best to help as many women as possible.

By Audrey Roy