Skip to main content

Why become a PyCon sponsor? A Sponsor's Perspective

The following is a guest post by Paul Hildebrandt of Walt Disney Animation Studios.


Hi! I'm Paul Hildebrandt, Senior Software Engineer at Walt Disney Animation Studios.  The Studio has been a PyCon sponsor for several years.  We highly value the relationship and love being part of the community.  

Recruiting
You want talent; go to the community passionate about the technology.  There will be 2500 attendees that are interested in Python.  In 2012 they held a jobs fair and are hosting one again in 2013.  I worked the jobs fair table with 2 other engineers (attendees) last year and we talked to hundreds of attendees.  We've found good candidates because of our involvement in PyCon and the Python community.

Influence
It's nice to get credit for doing the right thing.  Our sponsorship of PyCon has helped us open the conversation with people in the open source world.  You move from just being a user to a contributor.  It's nice to get a “Oh, I know you guys, you're a sponsor, that's cool.” response when talking to people about their projects.  We've had several people within the community come to our home in Burbank, visit, and speak to us because of our involvement.

Presence
The expo hall is a great place to showcase your product.  I really enjoy going there and getting information from the booths.  It's a great place to connect with people from the companies you heard about and discover new ones.

Value
The Gold and Silver sponsorship includes free conference passes, 5 for Gold and 2 for Silver.  If you are a small business they offer a substantial discount on sponsorship .   On top of the listed packages they've been flexible in working with us on special requests.

Ease
I want to add that I really like working with the conference coordinator and leadership.  They are a reflection of the Python community, a community of which we are proud to be a part.  

More information here: https://us.pycon.org/2013/sponsors/whysponsor/
and here: https://us.pycon.org/2013/sponsors/prospectus/
or contact Jesse Noller, the PyCon chair at jnoller@python.org

Please feel free to contact me,
Paul Hildebrandt  -
paul.hildebrandt@disney.com
Walt Disney Animation Studios -
http://www.disneyanimation.com/

Comments