Swag for FUDCons

[David Nalley]

On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 3:08 PM, Paul W. Frields <stickster at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mo Duffy brought up a good point in the Board IRC meeting:
>
> * * *
> <mizmo> jsmith, is there real value in the number of t-shirts we
> produce? could we be doing something to provide more value for the $?
> * * *
>
> Should we consider offering alternatives for FUDCon, or even general
> events?  Some of the ideas proposed:
>
> * Offer a choice for recipients to get something more {eco-friendly,
>  sustainable}, e.g. plant a tree
>
> * Offer the shirt in organic material if possible
>
> * Sell shirts to finance other parts of the event

Like Mr. Parrish, I value each of my FUDcon shirts. Particularly when
I was a nascent contributor (perhaps I still am?) they were
particularly prized, and people seemed to react positively when I wore
them.

In NA we essentially came to the conclusion that we couldn't sell
shirts at events because of a host of problems it caused. (In short
those were sales tax liabilities, potential 'business' licensing
issues in some venues, whose money it is, and how do we reuse it.)
Those problems didn't begin to delve into the question of - This is
effectively RHT funded swag, for a RHT-sponsored project, where RHT is
essentially the only legal entity to be seen; does that mean that
selling the swag is effectively selling done on behalf of RHT? And if
so, what does that mean? We never found out the answer to that
question because the prior issues largely made us decide that it
wasn't worth the hassle to recoup the costs.

Which brings me to the real question - is it worth the hassle to sell
shirts? - the last NA FUDcon had ~150 people, which means shirts
(assuming 7/shirt and some overage) probably ran ~$1100. (Though
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon_budget_template says to assume
$2,000) Depending on where they are coming from, that may be 3-4 more
people sponsored. I guess that's really a question for the budget
folks - are there contributors asking for sponsorship that aren't
getting it?

On a side note - I do find it odd to think that we go to non-FUDcon
events  and would hand out tshirts for free; most often to people who
aren't contributors, and yet consider charging our contributors for a
FUDcon tshirt.