Ask HN: What is good swag in Hackathons? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is good swag in Hackathons?

8 pointsmickaelkel12 comments

As I go more and more in hackathons, I see very often bas swag, stuff that I will never use after, or completely useless. Sponsors are throwing their money. I'm organizing a hackathon in the next weeks , I wonder if HN knows some specific swag that are good for developers. (not the classic "stress ball" or "branded pen", you see what I mean)that I could share with my sponsors to provide the best for hackers that will attend. Any ideas?

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My favorite swag to get at hackathons have always been the credits to use a service. I also enjoy t-shirts, especially if they are quality and a service/company that I like as I actually wear the shirt.

Example: Last hackathon I was at, Amazon was giving away $100 credits for AWS. I never used Amazon but I am more inclined to keep my projects up there after the credit runs out.

Favorites:

Credits (AWS)

T-Shirts

Water bottles (this one surprised me, but I got a couple from Palantir and I use them every day)

Maybe it's a geographical thing but I've never seen a stressball at a hackathon as swag (based in DC)

1) Gift cards for AWS (top of the list ...by far)

2) Ebook Coupons (e.g. OReilly)

3) Mugs (have dozens of MongoDB cups but can always use more :) )

4) People love laptop stickers ... I don't get it but anyways

I'd definitely say a t-shirt if you can afford them. I have t-shirts from multiple hackathons and wear them all the time. They get far more mileage than any sticker or pen I've received.

They need to be good t-shirts though, which means a decent design, good fabric, light-on-dark, well fitting (hint: female attendees have different body shapes to male attendees).

All of which can push the expense up quite a bit.

Toothbrush and mouthpaste for the 2nd day morning

I have an idea I've been kicking around for printed cards ... drop me an email and I can give you details

little moleskin notebooks?

http://www.moleskineus.com/mbxs717-moleskine-extra-small-pla...

iTunes gift cards?

I agree notebooks are cool. Twilio gave them away at their conference. Very cool.

NFC programmable stickers

Linode/AWS coupouns

Bottle opener keychains

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