Budget proposal: Swag for Neos Conference

The Neos Project Finances & Fundraising
#1

Hi,

I would very much like to get some Neos swag going and have that available at our Neos Conference (2017 :wink: ).

Although the planned swag (marketing goodies) budget was not spent last year, I think it makes sense to give it another shot.

The items should be generally Neos / Flow branded so we can use them for other events like Meet Neos, meetups, sprints etc.

  1. A plain Neos T-Shirt for every team member who wants one: 25x25€ = 625€
  2. pens, post cards, stickers, buttons… = 800€
  3. more stuff that creative people come up with

Imho an allocated budget of 5.000€ makes sense.

I’m looking forward to your ideas!

3 Likes
#2

Just my 2 cents: I would prefer if we use that money for something more useful. I still have my Neos shirt from the sprint, it looks great, but I don’t wear shirts and actually most done. So I personally use it as a sleep shirt… ok, but was that really money well spend for Neos?

Let’s use the money and time to build great features or to improve the release process. With that money we could pay testers to play around with Neos 3 for days and report all the bugs which somehow can into the stable release.

Now attendees can choose between less Neos bugs and T-shirts… my choice would be clear.

#3

@christianm https://the-pastry-box-project.net/goncalo-morais/2015-september-27 totally makes sense and I like the approach. I also like your comment @mrimann. How do we bring both together?

I understand and totally agree that

  1. we should not force Swag onto people
  2. we should not produce anything for the trash can
  3. different people like/use different swag (agree with @rolandschuetz’s comment about the t-shirts and goes along with 1)

If we want to offer any swag (for people who want it), it needs to be designed.

We could sell the swag to remove the “free” label which often comes with “not worth a lot”. Selling it at the conference has the advantage, that we don’t need to think about shipping etc. (compared to an online shop).

I see your point @rolandschuetz, but following your argument there shouldn’t be any marketing spending, which is too simple imho.

1 Like
#4

+1 for “The items should be generally Neos / Flow branded so we can use them for other events” - less waste
+1 for “Stop littering the world with useless crap.”, but I don’t think that pens and T-Shirts are generally useless crap (post cards and buttons OTOH…)

So what instead of forcing it on people, we make it an optional thing for conference participants with a “pay as much as you want” concept. Reduces people to thoughtlessly take away and create waste, but gives people another option to sponsor the Brand (or just restock some of their office needs for a cheap bargain).

Other ideas for “useful” swag:

  • notebooks; not the electronic ones, the paper things (every one needs to take some notes in meetings)
  • sticky notes (for the kanbaners/eventstormers)
  • cups (coffee and Neos just go well together, and cups sometimes just get broken)
2 Likes
#5

I would start with simple things that can be used for every event.

  • Postcards (like ones we created for the last inspiring con)
  • plain stickers
  • sticker sheets (similar to the ones created by t3n)
  • plotted foil stickers to put on your laptop (working both for mac old and new, with backlight and without)
  • At Sandstorm we produce flyers with a cool image and little Slogan on the front and a little explanation on the back. They could work like citycards that people collect and put on their fridge and they ca be handed out on every event.
  • mugs with just the “N”, I guess most core team members would want one :wink:
  • Buttons (maybe have a corner where you can create your own Neos button)

I am totally with you on not producing something that is tailored towards a specific event.

For “expensive” swag (e.g. mug) we could put a box there for donations and then maybe give the money to charity. Just an idea :wink: This way you might not just take the swag because it is there, but because you care and you want it :stuck_out_tongue:

Just a quick braindump

1 Like
#6

I’d like to see some stickers for the MacBooks . Round, plain black sticker and the white outline logo on it with a small neos.io below. But not the transparent MacBook sticker, should be white color so they can be used for the new MacBooks as well as just as a plain sticker

1 Like
#7

Hey,
In contrary to @rolandschuetz I wear t-shirts every day and the one from the sprint is one of my favorite :grinning: - so a new shirt would be great. (I would also go for a design that focuses the Neos band and shows the event smaller, if at all)
And I drink a lot of coffee - so my +1 for a mug.
Both do not have to be free, to sell it for a nominal fee / ~ cost price would be totally fine.

1 Like
#8

heyho,

i would love to have my first real neos t-shirt.

there is no girls shirt so far. the nearest to a girl shirt was produced on the typo3 conference when we announced the new name “neos”. this shirt shows the typo3 logo and the word neos next to it.

i don’t want to, but i have to wear this one if i want to wear a neos shirt. i would prefer one without typo3 logo.

so it’s sad that we do not embrace the few girls we have in our community with a shirt, but i understand that we are too few girls to get a significant amount of shirts :frowning: .

i want to add that putting logos on girls is a pretty good way to get attention ;-). if we use a nice color (pink! real pink, not rosé ;-)) we would not only draw even more attendtion but statistically we would also fit girls taste.

in general i think it makes sense to make different shirt in different shapes and different colors over time. you can produce some (not too much) without any dates and keep them in stock. next year you produce others.
since taste is different we could produce very different shirt over time. so over time everybody would find one which he/she loves.

5 Likes
Team Tiga - Team Meeting, 2017-02-14
#9

@daniellienert I think it’s great if you wear the Neos shirt, don’t get me wrong. Just saying many probably won’t so we shouldn’t throw it on them. Also adding a date makes it less interesting than a generic Neos shirt imho.

@tobias Of course neos needs a marketing budget. The comparison can a bit out of my frustration, sorry for that. I actually started a thread about that topic A proper release cycle

I think the marketing budget is better spend making for other things. Bye the way, I love the Neos brand, just beautiful.

#10

I like the T-Shirt-idea of @gina: Have several “generations” or shirts, different colors, different designs - but no event names or years printed on it. So we can sell shirts as long as stock will last - and have different kind of shirts available.

Taking the idea of @fheinze a step further:

For “expensive” swag (e.g. mug) we could put a box there for donations and then maybe give the money to charity.

Why not have a swag-booth with different things and a “proposed price”-tag next to each article. This tag could show two prices:

  • the minimum price that would cover just the production cost
  • the recommended price

Everyone could then choose how much he/she will spend on an article. This will basically open a certain risk of having less money in the box then needed in the end - but on the other hand I see a way bigger chance that the event attendees will take 2-3 items, sum the recommended price and round up to the next bill (banknote) and in the end there will be more money in the box than actually spent for producing the items.

In this regard, I’m not against investing part of the win into charity - but I think it’s probably more complicated than just saying “the win of these merchandise sales goes towards the Neos project” (e.g. for paying code-sprint food+beverage or similar). I think giving money to some charity is well worth it - but will lead to a discussion as each and everyone of us probably has different preferences.

So this will just “cost” money temporarily for pre-financing the pre-event production of stuff - then money comes back after each event. Thus the budget is more of a buffer (and risk) position than a fixed investment.

2 Likes
#11

To sum everything up:

  • we do not want to create swag that people take and then throw away
  • we put some kind of recommendation for a donation on the higher priced swag to ensure people take something because they really want it and not because it is free
  • the money earned can be reinvested in creating swag or be “payed back” to the foundation
  • first items to be created
    • stickers
    • mugs
    • shirts
    • postcards