If you want to promote tools, technologies, libraries, trainings or anything else of interest to software developers, you want to reach the right audience. Not the 9-to-5 people, but those who have the knowledge and passion that make them important multipliers.

A great way to reach these people are community conferences. They are not the kind of conference that the 9-to-5 folks are “sent to” by their company, but that the right people hear of via Twitter, Facebook, blogs or plain old word-of-mouth and choose to go to, often covering the costs for the day themselves (travel, entrance fee, hotel, taking the day off).

If you want to reach German developers there is one conference that has emerged as the large .NET community conference in Germany, quickly growing beyond being just a local event: The dotnet Cologne, that will be held for the third time on May 6, 2011 and that I’m co-organizing (this interview gives you a good idea of the history).

This year’s dotnet Cologne 2010 with its 300 attendees was a huge success. As in the year before, the conference was sold out weeks in advance, and feedback by attendees and sponsors was positive throughout. And the list of speakers and attendees sounded like a “who is who” of the German .NET community.

Whether you‘d like to present a product, a service or your company: you will meet the right target audience at dotnet Cologne. We’re offering a broad variety of sponsorship opportunities, ranging from being a donor for the large raffle at the end of the day (software licenses, books, training vouchers, etc.) up to having a booth and/or giving a sponsored talk about your product (not necessarily in German, English is not a problem). Among the various sponsorship levels (bronze/silver/gold/platinum) there’s most likely a package that will suit your needs – and if not, we’re open for suggestions.

We’re happy to announce that already at this point in time (with over five months to go) we have a steadily growing list of partners: Microsoft, Intel, IDesign, SubMain, Comma Soft AG, GFU Köln, and EC Software.

If you want to become a sponsor for the dotnet Cologne 2011, drop me a line at Roland.Weigelt at dotnet-koelnbonn.de and I’ll send you our sponsor info.