The Story in Brief
At Agile2011, I brought along a “gift”, a nicely formatted and illustrated Kate Oneal story. I gave a copy to everyone who asked for one, and to a few people who didn’t but who I wanted to have one anyway.
This was too clever by half. I made two mistakes, so perhaps it was even too clever by two-thirds. First, I tweeted about the thing only with no hashtag or #gotKate. I should have tweeted on #Agile2011. I momentarily forgot that not everyone in the world follows me.
Second, I made it too hard to get one. People don’t like to ask for things from people they don’t know well. Some people may have just stood near me hoping that I’d give them one — I’ll never know. Some people would come up and the conversation would go like this:
Some One said, “Hi Ron.”
“Hi Some,” Ron said.
“So, I hear you have some kind of a gift for people?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Is it a nice gift?”
“I like to think so”
This would go on at some length until Some One either figured out to say “May I have one?” or until Chet, bored with the game, would say “Ask him for one.” Once in a while I’d say “Would you like one,” but too often I was stuck in the nerd game of just answering the question logically but not usefully.
That was, not to put too fine a point on it, stupid, if my point was to give away as many of the things as possible.
I did manage to give away all that I was carrying with me every day, but never so many that I had to go back to my room and replenish early. So I’m sure there could have been more given out.
You Can Get One
Speaking of that, I’m willing to send a signed one to anyone who wants it, and who sends me a self-addressed stamped envelope. I will weigh the thing to see how much postage it needs, but two-ounce postage will surely do it. The booklet is 5.5 by 5 inches and you might want a stiff or padded envelope so that it doesn’t get crunched. I’ll update this paragraph when I know more.
If you have the thing and like it and would like a bunch to hand out, drop me an email and we’ll see what we can set up.
Feedback Please
Many of the people who got them expressed later that they liked them, so that’s good. Here, I’m soliciting more feedback on whether you liked it, whether you tried to get one and I never realized it, and on what should be done next.
I’ll tell the story of how we made the thing in another posting. In this one, I’d just like comments, offering ideas about what the thing is, how you liked it, whether I should do another one, whether you can think of some way to monetize the creation of these, and so on. Anything on the topic, really.
Thanks!
