Stephanie McCulloch is the Chief Schwag Officer for the SQL Server business unit of Quest. She’s on Twitter as SMcCulloch52, but she hasn’t posted anything yet. I’m not saying she likes to watch, but back to the subject at hand.
She regularly gives away schwag to webcast viewers, user groups, booth attendees, and so on. She wants to know what you would like to win.
So in the comments, let us know what your ideal prizes would be in the $50, $100, $250, and $500 price range. I’m curious to see what you think!
Something that’s no limited to USA-resident audience would be nice. I know international postage and laws are nasty-complex, but still….
Gail – that’s a REALLY good point. What should we give away that would work better in other countries? If we give away, say, Amazon gift certificates that arrive through email, is it easier to order through ‘em to get local delivery? Or is there an international chain that works better for schwag?
Speaking just for myself (in SA), amazon.uk or amazon.de are better than amazon.com, cause the US one won’t ship here any longer except by courier. Amazon.uk delivers here (don’t know for sure about all countries) very quickly (a week vs the US one’s 6-10 weeks)
I’d go for amazon vouchers and let the recipient decide which amazon to get them through. People in the uk would probably prefer amazon.uk over all others because of shipping cost and speed.
Don’t know about any other good chains that ship international, amazon’s the only overseas one that I use.
Handling overseas is hard. Some retailers (like amazon) won’t ship hardware international. DVDs have different regions, consoles have different regions and hardware settings. Hence the reason most competitions and giveaways are limited to USA or USA and Canada only
Amazon Kindle 2 (Global Version) – preloaded with top 5 SQL Server books you recommend.
That would be awesome!
I’ve worked with PASS Asia. Shipping swag is a huge problem in most cases the shipping costs 3-4 times more than the swag material. Fedex in my experience will get it through customs and all (other shipping modes mean you risk just getting a box with nothing inside) but fedex shipping is very expensive. The second problem is that most vendors including Quest have to have business interests in that part of the world to send stuff. They do oblige MVPs and some special people but the degree of interest they have in the States/Europe is not likely to be there for other countries unless they have business going on there.
For me the best ’swag’ we’ve had from Quest is visits from Kevin Kline (we’re lucky he lives 3 hours from here but still he is so obliging to talk to our UG). The charts are an oversell now, T Shirts are hard to get rid of. Books are always welcome and so is hardware and licenses. Thanks.
Brent I think a Toad for SQL Server Xpert license would be really cool.
I would also recommend a yearly subscription to Books24×7. I use this a lot at work to read the latest SQL 2008 books.