Mitzi gave a talk last night at the Paris PyData Meetup. It was hosted by OVHcloud, a cloud provider based in Paris. Not only was the setting amazing (window ringed conference room with a thunderstorm outside with lightning bolts shooting behind Mitzi), they passed out the best swag ever. Check it out:
At first I thought the thing in the lower left was one of those old school erasers. But then I realized it was a combination beer key and pizza cutter. How cool is that for a meetup? And naturally, this meetup had both beer in bottles and pizza. But no chance to try it out, as the staff supplied beer keys and had cut all the pizza.
Yes, that’s a pair of socks on top. I remember having lunch at a conference with Stu Shieber years ago, when I had plenty of swag from the startup I was at (SpeechWorks). Stu said we should pass out branded sweatpants, because everyone passed out t-shirts and he had to buy his own sweatpants.
Then there’s the quintessential French writing device—the Bic 4-color pen. Bic’s a French company, so you see these everywhere. They were exotic in the states when I was a kid and I used to get one for Xmas every year. There’s also a pack of biodegradable playing cards, a tote bag, and a really nice notebook.
Thanks, OVHcloud, both for hosting and the super-cool swag.
Ooh nice! I’ll be at my first non-retreat conference since COVID kicked off next week (ASHG), and my first time at this specific one… will have to see what sort of swag they have to offer (some of the events sound like they’ll be rather fancy, e.g. one of them will involve a band called “Maroon 5”, who I’m told are quite popular. So I have high hopes).
Those 4-color BIC pens are my favorite — probably have a few dozen floating around the house & in various bags. Though mine are all blue, not yellow. They also make a version with graphite (sacrificing the green color). Very convenient to have them all at hand when writing and annotating notes or drafting a figure idea! I’ll still reach for eg a Sakura if drawing or writing a card / letter, but for working stuff out it’s hard to beat the versatility.
The correct term for beer key is “church key”. Sheesh. Whippersnappers nowadays. Grumble.
I’d say, “I’ve heard it both ways,” but I can’t recall ever hearing the term “church key.” I wish I were young enough (if not brash enough) to be considered a whippersnapper, but I’ve been of legal beer-drinking age in the US for nearly 40 years! I’m sure I’ll soon be experiencing the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, where I hear it all the time, because it’s definitely more popular on the internet than “beer key.”
Respectfully, swag is wasteful and we could do with less of it. You don’t need an extra pizza cutter in your house. So much of this (plastic) stuff just ends up in the trash. That cotton tote bag was much more costly to make than it might seem. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/style/cotton-totes-climate-crisis.html