Conferences and companies hand out all sorts of swag: bags, t-shirts, badges, pens, pads, stickers, blinking toys, and more. For example, I remember a particularly good OSCON bag from a few years ago (Monterey? San Diego?) about which dozens of people have said “my family still use that bag!” years later. I’m personally done with t-shirts, having just moved a huge box of the bloody things across the world only to discover that I’m happiest when I only have six in my dresser. Good pens are always welcome, but I prefer elegant thin understated pens to the overinflated plastic neon ink crayons that seem to be the rage these days. What are your favourite tchotchkes or conference swag? What’s held up to the test of time?
