Context: T3chFest is a non-profit technology event in Madrid organized by students and alumni. Tickets are free for people under 23, and the rest are 6€ that are donated to NGOs. Everything is paid by sponsorships and donations.
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.
I worked for Microsoft back in 2018-2019 and I was in charge of choosing and sponsoring T3chFest. It was BY FAR the event with the highest engage metrics per euro invested.
It was crystal clear that they were a NGO because they did not enforce contracts and deadlines like a professional event organization. But we understood it and tried to help them to cross the corporate hurdles to close the sponsorship deal.
I don’t know what is happening, and I’m pretty sure this is peanuts for Couchbase. They should fix this mess just to avoid the impact in their reputation.
"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.
Yeah, that may shoot down my "good intentions" theory.
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.
Hopefully, the negative exposure that couch base receives just from this Hacker News story will outweigh the amount they saved by reneging on their sponsorship, and that will discourage other companies from doing the same in the future.
> and that will discourage other companies from doing the same in the future.
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!
Penny wise, pound foolish move from yet another tech company.
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 it’s any other reason than Couchbase didn’t want to pay for the sponsorship anymore? Is there a statement from Couchbase about this? If not I’ll err on the side of trusting the conference over them and effectively blame them.
Thanks, taking that reply at face value means I'm wrong that it was only about money. It is still a pretty shitty thing to do at the 11th hour, there are many better ways Couchbase could have approached this.
I suppose the question will be whether or not Couchbase pushed for their logo inclusion prior to payment. This might be negligence on the organizers behalf, however, the marketing department may be better off just paying for the sponsorship regardless.
I have organised many events when I was in school, when you're doing things for fun and with a sense of community, it takes a couple of stings like this for you to start taking contracts more seriously.
These sponsorships are finalised months in advance, so there is enough time to print logos everywhere. They are also relatively cheap, especially given that this is held in Spain (have done some volunteer work back in the day there, they usually go for the lower thousands), and Couchbase is trading at Nasdaq.
I cannot think of a good excuse to pull out from it at the last minute.
I can think of reasons but they’d be the kind of thing that you’d make an immediate public statement about – you’d be talking about crimes where most people would feel the need to warn others in the community.
> they’d be the kind of thing that you’d make an immediate public statement about
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.
Maybe? It just seems hard to reconcile that with backing out a few days beforehand. If I only noticed that so late, it’d either be minor enough that I’d keep my commitment but tell them that it was the last year or something so big I’d want to warn the community. For a few thousand Euros I’m just not sure what’d be worth the cost & reputation hit for a solvent company of their size.
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.
The other side is choosing not to make a statement. There's no reason to wait for Techfest to have to announce it first and get impugned by corpo apologists.
I also feel like I need to hear from the other side, but pulling your sponsorship 4 days before the event needs to have a very, very serious reason. I find it hard to believe that nobody knows why they pulled it if it's that serious.
Escrow is a bad idea. Swag is expensive. If I was running a convention that had sponsors, I ain’t putting your logo on anything until you’ve paid for it.
Note, I have helped run a convention. Mostly with logistics and reviewing contracts. So I do have some idea what I’m talking about.
Try being a 19 year old student that goes to a print shop for 200 t shirts and 600 stickers. tell them you'll pay them after the print and be laughed out of the door.
The escrow is not for you and the print shop, the escrow is for the sponsor and you. If this is a typical case where you have to front the money for printing and then get the sponsor money after the fact, then escrow would protect you from companies deciding they would rather not sponsor four days before the event, and well after things have been printed.
If on the other hand companies usually pay up front for a sponsorship, then escrow would not be needed.
> escrow would be better than the current situation?
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).
1. Escrow isn't free in time, attention, or money. (Why does everyone on this site think escrow and lawsuits are free?)
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.
People seem to be attributing "bad intent" here that may not have occurred. In my experience, situations like this occur quite often for various "good intention" reasons. Usually they are resolved before there's an issue, but sometimes they don't work out.
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 ...
---
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.
---
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?
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/