developer-event-sponsorship

The saved excerpt is a snapshot from when this skill was listed. The external source remains the complete and most current version.

---
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 col