The East Bay WordPress Meetup is made possible with the support of several organizations. In the interest of transparency, I’m laying out what each of them provides here.
WordPress Community Support, PBC
We joined the Make WordPress Community program for meetups during our Contributor Day in 2016. We transferred our Meetup.com account to WPCS, so we no longer have to pay the $19.99/month Meetup.com organizer fee. WPCS also covers venue rental fees from Port Workspaces, or will once they start charging.
Tech Liminal and Port Workspaces
We have access to our venue, Port Workspaces, because of Tech Liminal, which used to host the meetups in its previous location. Port Workspaces has not been charging us for use of the kitchen/dining area in the Kaiser Mall location on Sundays, because that facility is not open on weekends…yet. Once Port Workspaces starts charging, WPCS will cover the meeting rental fee. (I can’t find information about meeting space rental fees or I’d provide the dollar equivalent of this contribution.)
Pagely
Pagely provides our eastbaywp.com hosting and has since 2010, shortly after I first met Joshua and Sally Strebel at WordCamp SF. Since that time, they’ve transitioned from small-business WordPress hosting to enterprise WordPress hosting. The invoice says “Pagely Free,” so I’m not sure what the equivalent value is. A Pagely account for a single site was $19.99/month when we started and $29.99/month the last time I remember seeing it listed.
A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting in Michigan sends us $80/month by PayPal for pizza. (They send it to me, I send it to Anca, Anca orders the pizza.) Since we meet at lunchtime, providing food increases our attendance. It also gives meetup members an opportunity for informal socializing. We usually order pizza from Namaste in Oakland. A2 also sent us some cool T-shirts once.
Modern Tribe
Thanks to Modern Tribe’s Meetup Organizer Program, we have a license for Event Aggregator ($89/year value, though the Meetup license doesn’t come with support). Event Aggregator imports our Meetup.com events to this website so that you can see upcoming meetups right here.
O’Reilly
We’re part of O’Reilly Media’s Partner Program, which offers us a 40% discount on print books and a 50% discount on ebooks and videos in exchange for posting about their events on social media and sending emails to our meetup members. (So if you ever wondered about those conference announcement emails, that’s what they’re about.) Use the code PCBW to get your discount. Note that O’Reilly is going to close their shop and switch everyone over to Safari soon. I’m not sure what this means for our meetup.
Pearson/InformIT
The East Bay WordPress Meetup is also part of Pearson’s InformIT Community Groups Program. We can request items to use as giveaways, plus you get a discount at InformIT, Cisco Press, Pearson IT Certification, Que Publishing, Adobe Press, and Peachpit Press. For a 40% discount on print books, use the code ITCOMMUNITY. For a 45% discount on ebooks and other digital products, use code DIGITALCOMMUNITY.
DevNetwork
Once or twice a year, DevNetwork provides $100 in exchange for announcing a relevant conference to the meetup mailing list. The most recent payment was 7/18. I kept $10.87 to cover the cost of renewing the domain on 7/15 and sent the rest to Tech Liminal for our Contributor Day.
One-Time Sponsors
From time to time we have sponsors for individual meetings, who may provide free licenses or discount codes for a product, swag, or other goodies. You can see these people listed on our Meetup.com page. If you’d like to sponsor an individual meeting, contact me.
