I think t-shirts and a photo gallery would be great!

I would answer questions if you sent a video camera. I can't answer for anyone else.

I just saw this, and I don't know if anybody else has, I am going to let them know.

I hadn't been checking for new threads in the group, mea culpa. Let me link over here from the Houston page, and see what the other think.

hi gayle and SMoM - do let me know what others think - these meets can be such fun, and I'd love for us to support you however we can.

:)

I'll also touch base with you before the Oregon Coast meet. T-shirts would be fun.

One thought occurs to me and that is that many people use an avatar on here because they really don't want a picture associated with their user name out on the net. If we start posting pics it may discourage some from attending the events.

This is true but wouldn't having it for members only help? Or we could post pics of consenting attendees only to a members only board. Or maybe there is a way to set it up that just a specific group could see it? the attendees and invited friends only or some such. I don't know anything about computers so I don't know.

I do think t-shirts are a good idea. We could use them to recognize each other, and have a memento of our trip.

The video camera sounds like an ok idea too, if they got the people's consent to use the video.

CarlaSue - sounds great - keep me posted on how many t-shirts you'll need!

Gator and gayle - I hear your concerns about people's photos on the web. There are a couple ways to address this. The most sure-fire way is to find out at the onset of the event who is OK with having a photo online, and who isn't. Then, when it comes time to upload photos, don't include any images that have people who have not explicitly opted in to having their photo online.

Another way as gayle suggested would be to make the gallery page "members only." In general, I tend to gravitate towards the more simple, non-technical solutions, but in this case, I do know that a better photo viewing experience is on our Master List of Projects. To that end, I think we should enable members-only galleries there, for sure.

One point that bears mentioning - chances are good this won't be ready for a while. I will track down an engineer to find out if there are other simple solutions that don't require so much development work.

T-shirts are a no-brainer. I think we'll send them to the host of the event so they could be distributed to everyone who shows up. This way, everyone who attends is sure to get one.

So maybe 7-10 days before your event, the hosts should email me at feedback@tbd.com and give me their head count so I can get these off to you in time. Fun!

As far as the camcorder goes, we can leave that up to each host. Again, esp since the members only gallery won't be ready most likely, participation would have to be limited to people who are okay with having images of themselves online. Of course we would never ever use your real names, so it would be just your TBD username and image.

Oh oh another idea! You could also wear dark glasses and a big floppy hat. :)