by initiative of Sitegeist, I’d like to raise the topic of acknowledging sponsorships of core features (or other things) by (end) customers. Typical situation: a web agency’s customer needs a specific feature which doesn’t exist yet in Neos and decides to sponsor its development. Now, it would be nice if we could acknowledge this sponsorship in some way, for example by providing something he can put on the wall.
I suppose you all know the “sponsorship canvases” which sponsors often get at our conferences. Sitegeist would like to provide one of these to one of its customers (see example below).
Now, I’d like to discuss with you:
are you generally in favour or against (if so, why) establishing something like an acknowledgement banner / canvas / thing for core feature sponsors?
what kind of rules could you imagine?
As for 2), I imagine something like defining a minimum effort / work which need to be fulfilled (like: at least 2 weeks of work or so).
I know that I’d like these banners / canvases to happen, but I’m unsure about the criteria and what other possible acknowledgements we have to think about. And what about web agencies, freelancers, Neos Team members?
I like a lot! We’re also thinking about ways to get our customers more connected to Neos, and I think this might help in relation to that.
But not all contributions would really be work related, would it? But I’d say that 2 weeks of work would be a bit too much to start with, maybe we’d need different sizes of the batch and start with 1 week of work or so?
And would it only be for sponsoring? Or can companies get it for developing the full feature?
Generally like the idea, would actually like if we featured it publicly on the website somewhere as well.
To me 2 weeks sounds okay, would personally only really consider it after that amount of work anyway.
Also I would guess it goes back, so it could be given to those who have done it in the past but never really attributed for it.
I think it should apply to companies (agencies, freelancers, team members) as well, but we might need a way to propose them and then the team verify/discuss them if need be.
TechDivision brought up a similar question. They asked about a recognition for their efforts to organize Inspiring Con. I personally don’t think one of the existing badges qualifies, as they have a different meaning.
And those 2 categories should be kept separate imho:
direct financial support to the project (=recurring or one-time badges)
indirect or non-financial support (e.g. event organization, core feature sponsoring)
thanks for opening the vote! One question: was it intentional that you can only pick one of the “What do we want to support with recognition”?) Because I’d pick all of the ones mentioned.
A company or person is eligible for a core feature sponsoring recognition once the money spent on a core feature exceeds the minimum threshold of 4.000 € of effort (approx. 40h of work).
Types of recognition
Gold - 20.000€ (approx. 200h)
physical badge (smaller than event sponsor) to stand on a desk
digital badge to put on website
news mention on neos.io with option to add a section about the company
Badges contain “Core Feature Sponsor [level]: [feature name]” and the company logo
Restriction
Companies, where active core team members work on core features are not eligible for the core features sponsoring. The reasons being that we want to recognize the actual spending of money on Neos and we believe that the “Active Core Team Member” Sponsoring is much stronger in its marketing effect.
There is an edge case, where another employee (not a core team member) of a company develops a core team feature. However, we agreed to not flesh this case out until it actually materializes.
Vote
Yes! Fully agree to the suggestion
Yes, but read my improvement suggestion in the comments
Companies that employ and support one or more active core team members are rewarded for their investment in Neos (assumed they support the core team member spending company time for their Neos work).
Type of recognition
digital badge which shows the [current number] of active core team members and the company logo. The badge is hosted by the Neos team in the cloud and updated when the number of core team members at the company changes.
when a new team member is added, there is a news on neos.io and the new team member is added to the teams page
Vote
Yes! Fully agree to the suggestion
Yes, but read my improvement suggestion in the comments
Hey, what would be the minimum amount of time the company has to sponsor?
E.g. in some periods of time I’m allowed to work 20hrs/month on new UI during work time (depends on general workload), I generally get to fix bugs we hit during our projects and so on. Also I join codesprints on company time. But as well as that, I spend a lot of my personal time on Neos, so it’s more like 50%/50%.
Regarding the profile field, I think that should be up to a contributor to decide. E.g. I’d definitly love our company to be listed next to my name.
At first I thought: “I am fine with a physical badge, but not sure how much effort and costs that would bring with delivery and stuff. I can imagine to leave the choice to the supporter if it’s appreciated to have one.”. But thinking about it for a bit longer it should be pretty easy as chances are high that there’re team members on the event, and there we can reach out the badge ‘on stage’ of course, and there it will always be cool to the company.
Regarding the team member sponsoring: here we should not forget the companies that have been supporting the current (in)active members. We’ve for example supported the decix sprint last year by attending with 3 people and pay for travel / hotel ourselves. I think that by doing so the sprint last year cost us a considerable amount (around 1500 for travel / food / accommodation only, not speaking about wages / lost revenue). And that’s just one sprint example, and there’re more companies that supported Neos bigtime by ‘team member capacity’.
Not sure if this is off topic, but thinking about the costs of joining a sprint I’d also like to vote for a sprint supporter badge for companies that support by paying for expenses like traveltime / accommodations as that’s basically equal to sponsoring the event and doing a reimbursement from the sprint budget.
As we target for something like 4/hrs per week or 20hr/month in terms of time to contribute to the project this should be some kind of an upper limit?! So if you do get that much time i think it should be at least good to get the badge.
Talking about sponsoring a team member or just anyone who will join the sprint?
I wouldn’t make a differentiation between the two in this case. Paying for traveltime / accommodation should be seen as direct sponsoring if you ask me. Of course a company can market “we send people to sprints” themselves, so I’m not talking about the time. Just the concrete travelcosts / accommodation.
Of course, we need to flesh this out more and actually apply it in action
@radmiraal: the sponsoring for people to come to sprints is a valid and also delicate topic. We need to discuss this in more detail, as we probably don’t want to give out acknowledgements in an inflationary manner but on the other hand of course we want to recognize time and money spent for the project. I need to think about this…
First: In my opinion the company has an advantage when they send their developer.
From my experience (also in my company) it is a great opportunity for the developer to learn from (like minded) experienced people. Also it boosts their spirit. In addition the company gets direct connection to the core team.
Second: We talk about accomodation and travel costs (since upper mentioned it is not about the time they put in). So to put a number on I would say this is in average round about 500.- Euro.
So as a company you get
free highend know-how transfer
direct, personal connection to the core team
That’s like a workshop at a conference but without paying for the workshop. Even better you get direct connection to the core developers. In return the open source project gets help.
So I would say: no badge for paying for the accomodation and travel costs because that’s round about 500.- Euro and we voted further up by 51% for a minimum amount of 4000.- euro (33% voted for even more: 8000.-)
Hey @gina, I don’t really follow your argumentation to be honest. If I understand you correctly you say:
a company already has advantage because they can use it as marketing
as a core member you have advantages like knowledge / access to the team
Those might both be true, but that’s no guarantee at all and completely unrelated. First of all a company only has an advantage if they do market it. Bigger companies might do that, but I was for example always putting all the effort in Neos itself, and not in marketing things… having a badge would’ve been an easy marketing way, but furthermore I don’t see the relation and having a company I don’t see the value of “being a team member” over “contributor to open source”.
The second one is also not the full truth… The knowledge transfer and access to the teams is already true when people join slack, leach channels or just send pm’s.
But even if those would be real advantages which are equal to everybody (companies, freelancers, hobby-people): how should it make me feel that I spent hundreds (even thousands) of euros over the last years on travel / accommodation costs while I could’ve reimbursed? If that is not acknowledged it will lead to a simple thing… People will reimburse, and might use that money to buy a badge. What is the gain? Extra costs and probably less money to spend…
Honestly I’d be fine with whatever the outcome would be, but I see some flaws in the reasoning. If the whole badges system would’ve been in place before the 1.0 of Neos at least I would’ve reimbursed everything and sponsored back because that would’ve given me an advantage I could really use.
you say a person who is not necessarily a team member but attends a code sprint once (not reimbursing the travel and accommodation costs) should get a badge for the support (of not reimbursing).
i can follow all you arguments but i have no idea how to proceed but to take a voting seriously that we acknowledge from a minimum amount of 4000.- on, which is independent of the type of support.
you say this minmum amount for a badge would lead to everybody reimbursing travel costs. that would be very sad.
since the voting here seems to be clear we can’t ignore it. what we can do it get the things done which we voted on and discuss and vote later about an extension of the concept.
so this is what i suggest to do, to address both needs of taking team decisions seriously but also be open to changes, new input, suggestions and extensions.
Hey @gina, nope, I’m not saying everybody should get a badge. I just feel like it would be fair for people that spend quite an amount of money on travel costs or accommodation costs and never get any public exposure for doing so. That’s why I started this discussion multiple times already, and still the outcome is disappointing at least.
I don’t think its sad when people reimburse, that’s turning the whole thing around which is unfair. It’s nice when people do not reimburse, and for that it would be nice if there’s some acknowledgement. To me it’s so fairly simple… I can decide not to reimburse as sponsoring. If I would be allowed to reimburse, but I don’t… then this is clear sponsoring. If that is not acknowledged, why would I then not reimburse and keep the money and sponsor it in some other way (maybe buy a badge).
Regarding the voting: I wasn’t aware of some decision, probably missed it… The voting above in the polls left it open as it asked for “yes, with my comments below” and my comments are below
And really, I’m not saying we should throw around badges or so. But to me personally I feel like it would’ve been nice to get a badge which I could’ve put on my website, and I can imagine other freelancers that spent hours and hours on the project could benefit from it too. Those people can only contribute if they have enough work, and if such a badge can support those contributors in some way, than it’s a small gesture which IMHO isn’t even worth long discussions… still it goes on for about 1,5 years now…
sure, this i why i suggested a way forward.
if you don’t think that’s an solution what other solution do you suggest?
i’m a bit helpless here since i have a clear decision on the one hand and valid input on the other. so my idea is to work at least on the clear points (which the designer already does) and extend it then with other valid inputs later on. else we do not even move forward on the decided points which would be a pitty.
don’t you like that suggestion and if not do you have an idea how to solve that otherwise?
Hey @gina, argh, missed the “vote on an extension later”, yes, that would be good to keep progress. But then it is important that the extension really follows, even if that still means there won’t be badges. But this part needs to be sorted out at some point.
