Couchbase withdraws non-profit event sponshorship 4 days before
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The event is happening in 4 days, so their logo and name is already printed in all the leaflets, graphics, merchandising... and of course it's been in the website for a long time.
The sponsorship quantity is probably less than 5K€, a small amount for Couchbase, but big for the volunteer organizers.
Sponsorship: https://t3chfest.es/2023/en/patrocinadores
Organizers: https://t3chfest.es/2023/en/organizacion/
We have clear deadlines which are always an issue… If they haven’t paid they haven’t sponsored.
"We were also disappointed to pull out however our main Spanish speaking technical resource is very unwell making it impossible for us to attend. We will reach out again to discuss how we can work together, as this is not personal and we love what you do. Good luck with the event!"
This seems pretty naive in terms of DevRel. Seems like they view the sponsorship as a paid talk slot. Which of course can be fine and no one would be the wiser as long as you don't pull out if your speaker suddenly becomes unavailable.
According to the event's sponsorship page (linked elsewhere in the comments here), the speaking slot was 1500€ on top of the 990-4500€ "base". We can assume that they didn't get the "prepayment" discount since if they had already paid, this wouldn't be an issue.
What's still unclear is whether they are pulling out of the speaker slot only, or the entire sponsorship. Regardless, Couchbase shouldn't be withholding those funds just because their employee is unwell. They are essentially saying that they were planning on paying for that, but now they won't since they can't attend. That falls on them and is not the fault of T3chfest. They should still be expected to pay up.
And maybe they plan to? Maybe this is just a misunderstanding between parties where Couchbase told T3chfest that they wouldn't be able to send the speaker, but in the confusion someone took that to mean they wouldn't be paying for it either, when that wasn't stated?
Again, don't know, so I'm not going to jump to assumptions other than to say that, based on the response, I would expect (and hope) that Couchbase would still pay the sponsorship fees that they (clearly) committed to.
> Seems like they view the sponsorship as a paid talk slot.
Which is kind of BS. The organisation makes the sponsorship numbers public, and conference spots are actually extra.
You and I know that companies don't 'learn' like this...
It'll be one person within CouchBase that was championing this, and management okayed them spending $Xk to attend and give a talk. They're now sick, and they think that if they can get the $Xk back then they might be able to spend it on some other conference later in the year when they're better. And obviously everyone likes paid business flights to conferences in holiday destinations!
t3chfest ought to get one of those "kicked" stamps from a bar (used to indicate when a keg is empty and the beer on the printed menu is no longer available) and stamp it over every single one of the paper Couchbase ads. Hilarious to think how much brand damage they can do with a move like this that saves them... a bulk order of office coffee worth of money?
Are you suggesting the Tech fest Twitter account is lying, impersonated, or hacked?
I cannot think of a good excuse to pull out from it at the last minute.
Not necessarily. I could see committing to an event, finding something unsavoury and telling my contact I’m out but won’t make a fuss. They mismanage internal communications which leads to someone else blowing it up, thereby requiring I respond in public second.
The event is organised by alumni of the UC3M, a public university in Spain. This year is their 10th anniversary, it isn’t anything new.
Don’t disagree. But we’re going off reputation priors. Allegations can emerge that make affiliation risky without rising to the standard of public disclosure.
I understand the latency of printing merch and building media, but a platform with some teeth would put the brakes on this behavior.
Note, I have helped run a convention. Mostly with logistics and reviewing contracts. So I do have some idea what I’m talking about.
If on the other hand companies usually pay up front for a sponsorship, then escrow would not be needed.
Print shops won’t accept escrow, so you’d still need a guarantor. They’re screwed if escrow is revoked or payment never comes. You also won’t use escrow for a €5,000 donation on account of cost: to the agent, for the contract and in the added search cost for a sponsor.
When an entity sponsors an event, they begin to redeem the value of that sponsorship immediately in the form of publicity for the sponsorship, website logos, any other relevant copy or press, etc., so at that point since value has already been delivered, "escrow" would not be the correct service.
Because of that, the payment should be direct and in advance. It's just that many community orgs tend not to insist on it because they'd rather bring companies in on good faith (because it's often easier than getting immediate budget approvals).
Everyone over-commits and under-delivers. There's very little incentive to do otherwise. That's why I like "fuck you, pay me": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U
2. Sponsoring an event is effectively marketing. Returns aren't guaranteed in the first place. A $10,000 donation is less than most places spend on google ads for a week.
3. Conventions need the money before they can print anything. No one smart is doing net 30 invoicing for your sub-$1,000 print job.*
* We borrowed a volunteer's $85 laser printer for all of our B&W stuff. Print cost? An OEM toner cartridge and the cheapest box of copy paper Staples had.
For example, the sponsorship form might not have been signed by someone with signing authority. Usually, it's a lower-level marketing (or even engineering) person that is working on getting everything squared away. The peon who is "negotiating" was told by their management that they want to do it. The peon assures the person who they are working with at the event that it's going to happen (because they've been told that).
The time comes to print the materials, and the form still hasn't been signed. The event has two options - Forgo the possibility of the $5k sponsorship by telling Couchbase that they haven't signed the commitment, so they can't print their logo. Or hope that things comes through.
Again, 99% of the time, things work out. Printing the materials even though they didn't have the agreement (or money) in hand was the right call for the organization.
But sometimes it doesn't work out ...
Maybe (pure hypotheticals following, because we don't yet know) the person who was working on the sponsorship at the Couchbase end left the company. Maybe their boss, who had given the "okay" even left the company. Now there's no one at Couchbase who knew where this agreement was in the process - They only know that there's no sponsorship commitment that has been made. And they question why there doing it in the first place.
That's just one example.
Maybe the person who signed the sponsorship form wasn't a director and didn't have signing authority, but thought they were authorized to sign something as "simple" as a sponsorship form. Oops! The employee is fired for signing a $5k agreement, the agreement isn't technically valid, and ...
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Sometimes things are moving along beautifully and someone in management (rightfully) asks to have legal do a "quick review" of it, and there turns out to be something that the attorney has issue with (often an indemnification clause, inserted by an attorney on the other end). They end up not being able to resolve it and get the sponsorship agreement signed at all. Deadline passed, logos printed already ... uh oh.
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If there was a sponsorship agreement in place, then let's be realistic - It's doubtful that Couchbase would be thinking they could just get away with "pulling out" four days before the conference.
Something else is going on here. I've been through this before myself -- Usually we get the agreement finalized in time, for the good of all parties.
But is T3chFest really "out" this money? Would they have found another sponsor in time? Or did they go ahead and print the materials because they really had no other choice, and no time to line up another sponsor before the deadline since Couchbase hadn't signed the forms yet?
T3chFest printed the materials because the event is this weekend, so everything had to be ready. Seems like Couchbase bailed today.