Phone phone work work phone work phone
Hey, guess what? My welts are gone and I don’t feel weird anymore. And, best of all, my phone isn’t ringing as much today as it was yesterday (a bold claim to make at 9:23 a.m., I know).
One bad thing about the start of the semester is that our graduate assistants go back to part time (they often work full-time over breaks). The first week of classes is still a busy time, yet we suddenly have fewer employee hours to work with. Yikes. Yesterday I turned off my phone to try to work on conference planning. The problem is, my phone has a little light that flashes when it’s ringing, even when I have the ringer turned off. I made the stupid mistake of answering once when nobody else could take it, and that phonecall created a situation that made me need to call product support, and product support said they’d call back. So from that point on, I had to answer the phone every time it rang because maybe it would be product support.
It never was. The product support guy emailed.
Regardless, I got a fair amount done. I have to decide what conference schwag to give away. If you were attending this conference, which of the following would you most like to get? Naturally, all of the below will be emblazoned with the ICON logo and possibly the support line phone number. Not my phone number.
- Carabiner highlighter (aka a highlighter with a metal clippy thing that you can attach to a belt loop or a backpack or whatever)
- Insulated lunch bag
- Magnet (plastic with logo)
- Business card magnet (rectangular with a business card on it)
- Stainless steel mug
- Little tins with tiny mints
- Post-it notes
I think the stainless steel mugs and little tins of mints are the coolest, though unfortunately they’re expensive. But if I were attending the conference, I might rather get one cool thing than a bunch of little crap. What about you?
My preferences would fall in this order:
1. Insulated lunch bag (these are handy!)
2. Mug
3. Post-its
4. Tins with mints
5. Magnets (both kinds)
6. Carabiner highlighter
What, no pen?!
1. mints!! (consumable things are the best “take-aways” from any situation in my opinion)
2. lunch bag
3. mug
4. post its
5. highlighter
Pens are too skinny; they make the ICON logo look weird.
I’m glad other people like lunch bags too. I thought I was the only one. 🙂
mug
lunch bag
tin mints
post its
highlighter
magnets
also good job gettin the reply counter going again.
*gold star*
I think the right choice depends a lot on who the people are that are going to the conference. I guess it’s an online course management thing, so I’m guessing everyone attending is local and involved in administration in some way. The right choice might depend on how many people are at the conference, too. If it isn’t very many and you only want to use the items for the conference, I would go with something nicer because part of the cost is going to be setup cost for the screen(s) and running the job. If it’s something that might be useful promoting the system later on, it might make sense to get something less expensive and have stock for other uses. I think insulated lunch bags are cool, and most people don’t already have them. Plus, they have a big imprint area. You could also try to do something that fits in with the theme of the conference like a mini-fan with a tagline about making course registration a breeze or a puzzle with something about making it easier to put your course schedule together. It’s cheesy, but the cheesiness is what makes kids see it in a thrift store ten years later and say “this is hi-larious!”