{"id":1440,"date":"2009-05-07T11:00:58","date_gmt":"2009-05-07T10:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/?p=1440"},"modified":"2009-05-07T11:00:58","modified_gmt":"2009-05-07T10:00:58","slug":"good-swag-what-is-it-what-are-your-favourite-swaggy-items","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/?p=1440","title":{"rendered":"Good swag?  What is it?  What are your favourite swaggy items?"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><strong>Swag: <\/strong>that stuff given away at IT Pro and Developer conferences.  Swag is typically the free stuff that conference organisers give away &#8220;willy nilly&#8221;.  Expensive prizes may also be referred to as swag, but you may have to work for them (answer questions) or simply be lucky (name drawn out of a &#8220;hat&#8221;)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But what makes good swag?<\/p>\n<p>For me, good swag revolves around a few key concepts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Usability.<\/strong>  A pen is usable, however it&#8217;s an easy piece of swag for vendors and conference organisers to give out.  How many conference pens have you got?  How many are still capable of writing anything?  I filled an A4 paper box with conference pens gathered over the last 10 years: none of them worked without a lot of effort.  Granted pens are excellent if you need people to fill in feedback forms &#8211; having a pile of pens handy encourages folks to complete the form as they don&#8217;t have to hunt for a pen of their own.  USB pen\/key drives are usable, however only if they are &#8220;right sized&#8221;: 512MB is no good these days&#8230;unless it&#8217;s simply a CD replacement (<a href=\"http:\/\/devexpress.com\">devExpress <\/a>gave out 512mb drives at one of the TechSummits, it contained up-to-the-minute builds of <a href=\"http:\/\/devexpress.com\/Products\/Visual_Studio_Add-in\/Coding_Assistance\/\">CodeRush and RefactorPro<\/a> &#8211; this is when a 512MB drive is considered good swag!)  For key drives, 4GB used to be an expensive option, however nowadays, 8GB and even 16GB should be deemed reachable.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Fun.<\/strong> Swag has to have a reason for being, be it useful or fun.  Wrox lollypops are fun, as can be seen <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/craigmurphy\/tags\/wroxposin\">here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Practical.<\/strong> Practical and usable are very closely related, however there is a fine line.  Practical to me, means it&#8217;s not &#8220;throw away&#8221; type swag.  Usable means that I might not use it daily, but I will put it somewhere that I can use it.  Socks and wearables that aren&#8217;t garish are practical.  For example, I have a few pairs of thick Microsoft\/MSDN socks &#8211; these are practical.  Branded clothing is also practical, although some folks prefer the branding to be &#8220;delicate&#8221;&#8230;I personally don&#8217;t mind branding being &#8220;in your face&#8221;.  If you are thinking about producing wearables, assess your audience: how many XXL t-shirts do you see at conferences?  Too many IMHO.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>With those key points in mind, here are my four favourite pieces of swag:<\/p>\n<p><strong>DevExpress laptop bag<\/strong>.  Laptop bags are emotive items.  This one is perfect for 17&#8243; laptops, whilst still providing space for other toys and chargers (when I remember to pack it!)  It also has two stretchy bits at either end &#8211; ideal for a small umbrella (I live in Scotland, sometimes the rain is so heavy that a small umbrella is required) and a soft drink of some kind too.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Microsoft SharePoint thermal mug<\/strong>.  I use this virtually every day.  It&#8217;s perfect.  It fits in my car&#8217;s cup holder.  It works &#8211; hot drinks stay really hot for well over an hour.  It doesn&#8217;t spill.  I&#8217;m sure that I blagged this from <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/lliu\">@lliu<\/a> during a Microsoft MVP Summit.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Office duffel bag<\/strong>.  I have two of these.  They are great for carrying camera equipment at events as well as being an excellent golf shoe bag!<\/p>\n<p>I also find myself using a <strong>Microsoft .NET rucksack<\/strong> that was given out at MSDN Roadshows around 2000-2001.  It&#8217;s almost usable as a laptop bag, but since it has little in the way of padding, care is required.  Nonetheless, it&#8217;s &#8220;right sized&#8221;, not too big and not too small.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s not to say that the CodeZone fleece, the Microsoft MVP rugby shirt and dress shirts aren&#8217;t good swag &#8211; they are used very frequently too.  Good wearables, IMHO, make good swag, especially if the vendor goes out of their way to ask you what size you are!<\/p>\n<p>Bad swag manifests itself in the form of:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Stuff that is hard to get rid off.<\/strong>  If swag doesn&#8217;t fall into the usable or practical, folks may reject it.  Conference organisers like to give swag away&#8230;they&#8217;re not so keen to take it back!  Personally, I try to recover and re-use as much swag as I can: cleaners don&#8217;t want swag, they&#8217;ll simply &#8220;bin it&#8221;.  It&#8217;s important to recover such swag: vendors paid for it and gave it to the conference, recovery is key.  Besides, it&#8217;s only common decency to grab a box and run around the conference rooms cleaning up after you, yes?<\/li>\n<li><strong>Breaks easily.<\/strong>  Good swag can be delicate swag, i.e. it breaks very easily.  If that happens, word gets around and you have bad swag!<\/li>\n<li><strong>Doesn&#8217;t work.<\/strong>  Swag that looks to be useful and practical needs to work.  I&#8217;ve seen a lot of USB gizmos that were very appealing, however they simply didn&#8217;t work when plugged in.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Good, but legacy.<\/strong>  Think about USB devices.  1.1 is old hat now, don&#8217;t expect your audience to like you if you give them a 1.1 device that relies on a little bit of speed!  Folks won&#8217;t thank you for a USB 1.1 pen drive these days!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So those are my thoughts about good\/bad swag; some of them are &#8220;from the field&#8221;, i.e. from attendees at events; some are simply my observations.  They&#8217;re aren&#8217;t meant to be rude in any way, so please don&#8217;t take them that way.  Perhaps they&#8217;ve helped you?  I would be keen to read\/hear your views on this topic&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>What makes good swag?  What are your favourite items of swag?  Please do share in the comments!<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/rucksack1.jpg\"  \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/duffle1.jpg\"  \/><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/laptopbag1.jpg\"  \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/mug1.jpg\"  \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Swag: that stuff given away at IT Pro and Developer conferences. Swag is typically the free stuff that conference organisers give away &#8220;willy nilly&#8221;. Expensive prizes may also be referred to as swag, but you may have to work for them (answer questions) or simply be lucky (name drawn out of a &#8220;hat&#8221;) But what &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/?p=1440\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Good swag?  What is it?  What are your favourite swaggy items?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1440"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1447,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1440\/revisions\/1447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}