Today's video is all about conference
swag. Swag is basically the things that
the companies give out as part of the
sponsorships or as part of the events at
a tech conference. So as I mentioned in
my DevRel experiment video, I have been
attending a lot of technology events and
as a result, I have ended up with a lot of
swag. But what it also means that my
house is kind of cluttered up with
unnecessary swag right now. And that got
me thinking about the whole conversation
in tech about swag being useful or
wasteful. And one of the reasons I think
companies end up giving out wasteful
swag is because they don't have enough
audience feedback. So in this video I
want to share the swag that I found
useful and I hope that this serves as a
data point for companies and developer
advocates who are planning swag for
their next event. So I was going through
all the swag that I had collected and I
realized that the useful swag falls in
three primary buckets. The first category
is the usual: stickers, pins, and t-shirts.
I'm very selective about the stickers
that I put on my laptop because not only
is it prime property but also it
signifies my affiliations and I want to
associate myself only with the
organizations and projects that I
believe in. So companies that distribute
stickers with just their logos - I don't
see the point of them if I don't have a
very strong affiliation with the company.
But there is an exception - even if I am
not very strongly associated with the
company or the brand, I can be very
strongly associated with the message.
For example, this is a sticker from Cisco,
this is a sticker from a company called
flexport and this is a sticker from
Cigna
I do not have any strong associations
with any of these companies. I am not the
customer, I do not use their product, they
are not in the same tech stack that I
live in. But the message that each of
these stickers sent resonates very
deeply with me so I would happily
showcase them on my laptop. Same goes for
pins. I find pens to be a hit or miss. I
don't know why I would wear a pin with a
company's logo if I don't associate very
strongly with the company but if the pen
has a message that resonates with me
I'll happily wear it. The second category
of useful swag was things that I could
use in my everyday life. So that includes
this amazing travel pouch which is super
cute, very handy, holds a lot of things
and has a very good message
And it includes this beautiful tote bag
from flexport.
This collapsible metal straw. And this
coloring book from Groupon. Look how cute it is.
They also gave us these little coloring
pencils which are super cute.
And the final category of usable swag is
on-brand resources. So that includes
these question-like cards from Quora
about their job openings. I think Quora's
cards were especially smart because
Quora is a question-and-answer website
so it is totally on brand, it is very
innovative
it is very attention-grabbing and it is
very informative.
Another example of on-brand resources
are these really cute stickers from
Snapchat and Slack. Snapchat and Slack
both are known for their ease of use and
friendliness and quirkiness and emojis
for founda stickers to be very on brand
and also memorable. And the final example
is the cheat sheet from GitHub which is
a one-stop resource for everything you
need to know about getting started with
GitHub and I think this is totally on
brand - it is very helpful, it is very
informative and it's just one of my
favorite pieces of swag I have collected
so far.
So that has been my collection of useful
swag. That is all that I'm keeping from
all the things that I've collected in
the last three months and I hope this
video was helpful. I hope it helps you
decide the swag for your next event and
I would love to know what your favorite
swag is so comment down below and let me know.
I'll see you in the next video. Bye!
