On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 10:47 AM, Philip Hands <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:05:52 -0400, Gabriella Coleman <[email protected]> wrote: >> Finally, we will have a second front desk by the Computer Science >> Department entrance. Once I find out the hours and other logistics, I >> will start a wiki for staffing that area. I am somewhat concerned that >> we won't be able to find enough volunteers for a second front desk. Any >> suggestions as to how we can recruit even more volunteers would be >> appreciated. > > In an attempt to kill two birds with one stone, how about making that > into the "Merchandise Desk", and allowing people to sell T-shirts and > stickers and the like, with the profit largely going to DebConf funds. > > That gives people who volunteer for the task a reason to be there beyond > the absurd-doorman role, since they'll know they're directly benefiting > DebConf, and it will give people a reason to go there, so the volunteers > will get to meet loads of people and have a chat too. > > Also, anyone with stuff to sell will be a soft target for volunteering, > and can be persuaded to recruit volunteers for us if they don't fancy > sitting there themselves. > > Given that we know how many items we start with, and the selling price, > I don't see that there should be much of a problem with trust about > handling money, but then again, having done similar stuff with almost total > strangers manning the stands at UK Debian conferences, where we'd often > take several thousands of pounds, and have it around the place in cash, > I'm confident that this is not something we should be concerning > ourselves with too much -- this is not a normal crowd of people, and we > can take advantage of that. > > I'm happy to _own_ this problem, if anyone else is paranoid about there > being problems -- to the extent that I'll offer to reimburse anyone that > feels ripped off at the end of the week out of my own pocket. That's > how confident that I am that there will be no problems.
Thanks Phil, selling t-shirts has been discussed in the past by the sponsorship/local team with the consensus being something along the lines of "it's not a surefire way to raise enough cash to make this absolutely mandatory, but if someone wants to take ownership of it, it's not a bad idea." Since you are willing to take ownership of it, I personally support your pursuit of this enterprise, and suspect that there would be minimal opposition. That said, I can't recall if we ordered enough swag to sell. -Brian > Cheers, Phil. > -- > |)| Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560] http://www.hands.com/ > |-| HANDS.COM Ltd. http://www.uk.debian.org/ > |(| 10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London E18 1NE ENGLAND > _______________________________________________ > Debconf-team mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team > _______________________________________________ Debconf-team mailing list [email protected] http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-team
