[Yapc-na-organizers] YAPC Auctions

Dave Rolsky autarch at urth.org
Sun Apr 12 12:06:35 PDT 2009


On Sun, 12 Apr 2009, Daniel J. Wright wrote:

> 1.  They take up a lot of time and it appears that few attendees seem to
> enjoy sitting the entire way through.

I tend to agree. However, this doesn't rule out doing a _silent_ auction.

My animal rights group does this at our annual fundraising banquet. We 
have a reception with a silent auction, and it works well.

If you're going to do a silent auction, you'll still want a PA in the 
space where it happens so you can do a countdown and encourage people to 
bid on items.

Another thing you can do is hold a raffle. At Frozen Perl this year, we 
had two publishers donate about $250 worth of books each (ORA and Apress). 
We bundled each set of books together and had two different raffles at $5 
per ticket. I don't remember exactly how much we raised, but it was a 
decent amount (I think c. $300 with 80 attendees).

Of course, you could also do _both_ of these, and/or include a live 
auction. Personally, I think a live auction is good for a few select 
items, like "lunch with Larry" and stuff like that. It's possible to whip 
up a little excitement and get some drunken bidding going. It seems like 
this could easily be done in 30 minutes or less, by just picking a few 
unique items (no books, shirts, etc).


-dave

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