BooK

Last year, I wrote that the total cost of a Perl Toolchain Summit is in the order of 50,000€. It's all covered by sponsors and attendees (and the leftovers from the previous years).

We're now preparing the Perl Toolchain Summit 2026, which will be held from Thursday, April 23rd until Sunday, April 26th, in Vienna, Austria.

Today, I'll briefly explain why we need sponsors for the event, and propose a new way to think about sponsorship to our corporate sponsors.

In the early years, attendees would pay for their accommodation and travel out of their own pocket, or maybe as a work expense, if their employer was generous enough. The only real expense the organizers had to find money for was the venue. (Technically, the hotels usually expect some advance payment when booking 30 or more rooms in advance, but that does not apply if everyone is fending for themselves.)

The participants to the summit are giving so much to the community that, since 2011, we try to cover their expenses in return. We're not paying a salary or any compensation, though. The people who attend the PTS work for free (often on their own time), and we try to ensure it doesn't cost them anything in addition to the time and effort they put in.

This is why the event needs money: to pay for the venue, to cover the attendees travel and accommodation expenses, to throw them a nice thank-you dinner. The only time we actually paid for something extra was for the 2018 Perl Toolchain in Oslo, 10 years after the original Perl QA Hackathon in Oslo. We bought everyone a sweater with a cool Perl Toolchain Summit original design.

Now, imagine you're a company whose employee has been invited to the PTS. You know they will be doing good work during their four days there, to the benefit of your business and the broader community. You'll probably send them on company time, and cover their expenses. That makes you an in-kind sponsor, for which we are very grateful, and that we acknowledge when thanking our sponsors in all our communications. (Come to think of it, how many conferences publicly thank you for sending your employees there?)

Here's a suggestion for the generous employers that send their employees to the PTS on company time and expenses: pay it forward. Estimate the cost of travel and accommodation for your employee, double it, and round it up (possibly to the next sponsorship level). Become a monetary sponsor. This will allow us to cover travel and accommodation for your employee, plus another attendee, maybe two. Or maybe just half an attendee, as travel from outside of Europe is more expensive. Who knows, there might even be some tax incentive to spend the same amount on sponsorship rather than employee expenses.