The raffle

[bmf]

Moving the raffle helped a bit, but I think we had too many items to give away and it was still very chaotic.

What if we did something along these lines:

A) Offer a max of 3 prizes per meet up B) Instead of a raffle, we create a mobile site that offers up challenges for the prizes. These can either be JS trivia or challenges that pit the players against each other. At the end of the meet up the winners can claim their prize.

[qwo]

A) +1 to point one B) this might end up like sharpen your js saw where mostly people who were really seasoned with JS even attempted the challenges.

But overall i agree with point B and might be a great leadup into the event

[lynnaloo]

It was better, but yes we could still eliminate some chaos. I think the shirts and little stuff will go back to swag and we'll reduce the number of prizes to a few bigger ones. I think a puzzler with a grand prize is good for special meetups like Sharpen Your Saw because it goes with the topic, but largely I don't like winning based on trivia knowledge. I think it's really intimidating to beginners. These are the ones who also can usually benefit the most from the books.

[bmf]

It doesn't necessarily need to be trivia. Maybe we could set up something that logged when people connect and award a prize based on most number of connections. We can also switch up the game once in a while so it's not the same thing every meet up. I'm thinking we use these prizes to encourage networking within the meet up vs. just going to the meet up and possibly winning a thing.

[qwo]

this sounds like a job for meteor.

[bmf]

Sure, that's one possibility.

[lynnaloo]

My beef is specifically with puzzles and questions, so I'm open to other options. Sounds like a good thing to discuss/work on at a Meteor Code & Coffee.

[qwo]

im thinking of making something like a fun-show and tell type game just for giving away a prize or two. I agree with the prize caps of 3 per month so it speeds things up and laying out the rest if there is any.

[lynnaloo]

We should still get as many books as O'Reilly/No Starch/ etc.. will provide us for people to choose from and then 2-3 other prizes. D&B is guaranteeing us a couple Power Cards per meetup now. Handing those out is pretty quick and easy. That should make it about 50% less chaotic for January at least.

@stanzheng - I think we should get your Meetup script working a little better and maybe working in a simple application first before we create another web application for some other type of giveaway. That works pretty well for selecting random people and it encourages them to join the Meetup group.

[bmf]

Yeah I'm not so hyped on trivia, but I do like games that encourage people to learn a little more about the language and about each other at the meet up. +1 to working on this at the next meteor code and coffee. cc/ @BretFisher

[lynnaloo]

@bmf That's a good point. Getting to know each other in a way that's not too cheesy is a good idea.

[qwo]

haha my meetup script is working fine, the problem is the people in person != people in the room.

i hammered out all the kinks. I should actually just generate based on the size of the room and read off the top 3

https://gist.github.com/stanzheng/9de443b149c7ab37573a

On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 11:52 AM, Linda Nichols notifications@github.com wrote:

@bmf https://github.com/bmf That's a good point. Getting to know each other in a way that's not too cheesy is a good idea.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/norfolkjs/logistics/issues/63#issuecomment-67191410.

Stanley Zheng

[lynnaloo]

If you build it into a web application then you could open-source it for other Meet-up groups :)

[bmf]

Something like this could be fun and "do-able" so long as we kept it simple:

1000 Point Exchange
Each person that signs in gets 1000 points to start.. They are to try to win as many points as possible from their peers by challenging them one on one doing one of the following:

Simulated Rock, paper, scissors Simulated Flipping a coin

Rules: You must accept any challenge Sudden death, no two out of three Challenger always calls the side on the coin toss. Each win awards you 100 points from the loser's pot. If you hit 0 points you're out of the game

at the end of the night, the top 3 get prizes.

[qwo]

ha i was thinking something even simpler such as highscore of simon says game in meteor at the end of the night.

encourages hacking together small things than large projects. #showntell and all.

edit: that actually sounds pretty simple minus the point system

[lynnaloo]

https://github.com/norfolkjs/meetup-door-prize

This could use some serious improvements but it's a good starting place.

[bmf]

Housekeeping