TL;DR? If you hate the swag this year, blame me. If you love it? YAY!

Overheard: “WordCamp shirts last year were the literal worst.”
Also overheard: “Last year’s shirts were my favorite! I wear mine all the time.”

Personal taste is tough when you’re dealing with a hundred or two persons. Add in weird sizing issues between various brands and, you know what? We thought it might be fun to try something else this year. Ever had a Bagito bag?

As a little back story, I used to collect reusable shopping bags whenever I’d travel. It was a cool idea: bags pack flat and are super useful away and at home. But I travel fairly often, and it was starting to become a bit of a problem. My friends threatened to intervene when they saw a 30-gallon bin in my trunk completely full of them. “But I use them so often! They wear out! They’re hard to wash, so I’ve got to have a lot of them!”

I was a literal bag lady.

Then I came across these at a meetup a few years ago. These bags are thin, soft, super compact, ultra washable, made from plastic bottles — and still big and strong enough to hold what would normally take 4-6 plastic bags at the grocery store, especially considering how most stores double-bag the heavier stuff.

Slowly I started to realize I wasn’t even touching my previous collection anymore. I donated my old bags to a better cause, and now I’ve got my trunk back.

I can’t say as much for my t-shirt drawer though, which is constantly full no matter how much I try to do my version of Kondo to it.

So this year I finally convinced the WordCamp SLC team to give away bags instead of shirts. If you hate them, I’ll take all the blame. But I really hope you’ll find them as useful as I have. And if nothing else, registration and swag distribution should go *way* faster this year.

And, if you don’t like them, come help with the organizing team next year — we’ll figure something out 🙂

Either way — see you on Saturday!