In reply to Tony Perez.

I do agree that sponsors sometimes feel like second-grade citizens (this mostly depends on the organizers and their treatment of the sponsors) and this seems too against the spirit of the project.

I'll chime in for a bit. We've just sponsored a WordCamp (gold package, highest one) and sponsors were not even listed in the sidebar of the WordCamp website. I haven't been there in order to comment on the offline part of the things, but there were no sponsors listed in the sidebar, no blog posts praising any of the sponsors, and no tweets either.

Having said that, we're on very good terms with the organizers and that's not a personal issue with us - there was simply ZERO sponsorship coverage online from any of the usual channels. But that oversight isn't very promising and also proves lack of internal planning with regards to the sponsors, which I consider a problem.