What is a Sprint and why is it important to you?

A Sprint is a very focused development period in the spirit of Open Source, where developers from all around the world gather for several intense days of coding, brainstorming, and debugging to make the software that you use and love work reliably and intuitively.  The Snow Sprints push Plone development forward and provide an opportunity for busy developers to have a concentrated period in which they can work on a product they are passionate about; sometimes, a Sprint is the only time a developers can make serious headway on a Plone Product. By hosting Sprints, we provide the opportunity to further development of Plone's core applications, make the system more stable and robust, squash bugs, write documentation, and build tools that make Plone easier to use, maintain, and develop for.

Of course, a Sprint is much more than that. For an excellent explanation, read Jon Stahl's (Plone Conf 2006 Conference Organizer extraordinaire) excellent blog post "Sprint Wisdom" where he talks about his first experience at a Sprint.

By donating to a Snow Sprint, you can help spring Plone into the future.

Many people have never considered the cost of a Sprint. How about the investment put in by the Sprinters?  If we add up all of the costs, travel, lodging, food and transportation, the cost would be roughly:

€10,000 - Actual Sprint facilities cost
€ 5,000 - Lovely Systems (host) preparation outlay
€25,000 - Estimated travel expenses for Sprinters
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€40,000 - Total actual Sprint costs!

This does not include the cost to Sprinters in the form of time off of work.  Most Sprint attendees (who tend to be freelancers or own their own business) are not paid for their time away from work. Imagine a contractor makes €50/hour average, over 7 days, at 8 hours a day. That's €84,000 for 30 developers missing work (this year there are almost 50 developers attending).  That would bring the total cost of a Sprint to roughly €100,000!!

The money you donate will go directly to helping Sprint attendees contribute to Plone and the associated products that Plone relies on every day.  Donating even a small amount will help us! Individuals and businesses who donate will be listed on the site and given thanks and recognition for their contributions.

Give now to help the Sprinters at Snow Sprint 2008 make the best software for you!

By asking for your donations, we are not trying to earn money and get rich, but instead to cover the very real expenses incurred by throwing a Sprint.  This includes travel, planning, lodging, food, connectivity (net access).  We are trying to help out the developers who have come from all over the world to contribute to Plone.

Now is your chance to give back. Please consider sponsoring Snow Sprint 2008, and help us make it possible to continue having these Snow Sprints. We have grouped the sponsoring in three levels. They are gold, silver and proud sponsor:

Any donation amount

• Honorable mention on the Snow Sprint pages and publications
• We'll raise our glass to you at the Sprint!

Proud Sponsor: 500 euros

• Your logo on website - small size

Silver Sponsor: 1000 euros

• Your logo on website - medium size
• Mention on all sprint publications
• 1 copy of Zope 3 book

Gold Sponsor: 3000 euros

• Your logo on website - large size
• Mention on all sprint publications
• Promotional text and link on website
• 2 copies of Zope 3 book
• 1 free snow-sprint ticket
  

Where will my donation go, what will you do with the money?

Donations to Plone Sprints will be distributed to Sprinters who may need assistance for their travel expenses.  Money may also go to reimburse Sprinters who paid the €480 price to attend the Sprint.

So, please take a moment to donate any amount that you feel you can spare.  Every donation, no matter how small, makes this mainly volunteer-driven, Open Source CMS as robust and rich as possible.  Plone and the Plone community sincerely thank you for your contribution to help make future Sprints possible.  Your contributions make a difference!

Just a few of the projects Sprinters worked on during past Snow Sprints:

Event system for Plone
i18n/l10n improvements
ATContentTypes
Plone on CMF 1.5
ArcheTypes 1.3.2 release
ArcheTypes 1.3.x documentation
CMFMember release
ArcheTypes 1.4 beta development
TeamSpaces release
ArchGenXML development and documentation
CMFEditions improvements
Membrane
Remember
Calendaring improvements
KSS