Reactions to Sponsorships

The conference party has been a part of Northern Voice since the very beginning (though the first year was a post-party instead of a pre-party).

This year, our pre-conference party at Frederico's has generated a lot of pondering and cross-posting about the sponsor who's helping us to put on the dinner, the BC Liberal Party.

Discussion has been feisty on Twitter and disappointed on Facebook, and various bloggers (penmachine, duanestorey, tris hussey, peechie) have also written about their position on the sponsorship.

We appreciate how much feedback we've received, and we wanted to share with y'all the view from the organizing committee.

First of all, it is true that sponsorships create a little more of an association than regular advertising does. You don't necessarily think a billboard owner loves and endorses every ad that appears on it, but we don't deny that a sponsorship is more personal than that.

That's because, honestly, we do appreciate the support of each and every one of our sponsors, and they really do want to support us because, let's face it, there are other places they can spend their marketing money. We have three "Amazing"-level sponsors: Mount Lehman Credit Union, 6S Marketing and the BC Liberals, and then there are six "Splendid" sponsors: Nitobi, Peer 1, Webnames.ca, Workspace, Suite101.com and Automattic. It's because of their assistance that we can put on the conference this year, that we get to hang out all together and learn, and that we are able to provide such a good experience at such an affordable price.

For this reason, we obviously encourage you to support our sponsors. We also understand (and our sponsors understand) that not all of you will support all of them. Maybe you don't like Automattic's WordPress blogging tool (as if!) or maybe you don't like ... well, whatever you don't like. If you don't want to support a sponsor, and you want to skip the party or otherwise register your protest with each other or with us, or even get a refund (if you ask before Feb. 16, in accordance with our refund policy) that's fine. We understand that not everyone is going to like everything we do -- and frankly, we wouldn't want to run a conference that never took a risk and tried to not offend anyone.

But if you feel strongly about any of our sponsors, positively or negatively, we encourage you to come to the conference, learn more about blogging and social media, and then go off and use what you learned to really spread the word. And then, when we start planning next year's conference, you can join the organizing committee and help us see the light.

We'd also like to add two final thoughts to the mix. First -- there are lots of places the BC Liberals could be spending their money. Aren't you happy it's at Northern Voice? And second, if this sponsorship is an indication that they're getting more interested in blogging (it is 2009, after all), and they're maybe even going to start blogging, that makes us happy, too.