Integrity rule

The published boundary on what sponsorship money can and cannot buy. Money buys visibility, presence in the room, activation space, tickets, and access to an audience that chose to be there. It does not buy a stage slot, a panel seat, a speaker the sponsor nominates, or the contact details of the people who registered. Audience data goes out in aggregate only. The rule earns its place for two reasons. It protects the program, because the moment a stage is purchasable every talk on it gets heard differently, and it protects registration, because people sign up more freely when they know their details stay with you. Write it into the prospectus itself. Then saying no stops being your opinion and becomes your published policy.

Source: Course label for a doctrine stated plainly in the DevOpsDays organizing guide. Verbatim from the program section: “No sponsor should be able to buy their way into the program. The schedule should be decided by your local organizers.” From the essential rules: sponsors “are never given attendee contact info by a devopsdays event’s organizers, nor are they allowed to purchase speaking slots for talks or ignites.” And from the sponsorship packages section: “we do NOT ever give out or sell lists with contact details of attendees. You can share demographics in aggregate to give sponsors a feel for what kind of crowd will attend” (devopsdays.org/organizing). The naming is ours; the rule is theirs.

First used in: 1.5 · Sponsorship I: the package. Held under pressure in 2.4 · Sponsorship II: selling and activation.