Swag has been ordered! â
At most conferences, attendees walk away with some conference swag, like a T-shirt with a fancy design on them.
Why swag? â
Swag is to conferences as souvenirs are to holidays.
Swag helps make the conference memorable, spread the word, and sometimes even provide value!
Of course, like souvenirs, swag can also provide negative value, and become another thing that collects dust or gets thrown away once you return home.
Having received (and rejected) swag over many years, I didn't want to contribute to adding more waste to the planet.
What were our goals? â
So my goals for swag were three fold:
- Meaingful - A story, not another logo on a bottle.
- Valuable - Ideally something that will be useful on the snow. A cup loses it's individual value once your pantry is full of similar cups.
- Showpiece - A conversation starter, not another pen you'll keep in your drawer.
One of the goals that was being targetted was "Environmentally friendly". Being the first event, time and cost pressures made achieving this difficult, and so this is a goal that will be sought in future editions.
Now that the deadline has passed for the Cool Contributor swag item, tune in to hear more about the process behind finising that up!
P.S. I recently learned SWAG is an acronym that means "Stuff We All Get"