I refused the goodies' bag at the last conference I attended (ParisWeb). The staff, always very careful about their attendees, asked me politely why I declined that "gift", here are some reasons in no particular order:

• I presume that most of the bags (and their content) were trashed within 2 days after the conference, ecologically that's just crazy.
• Half of the bag used to be full of crappy goodies to promote brands I don't care about (or worse).
• Most of the content is not adapted to me: I got an smartphone to read the program, the t-shirt is too large, I already have a pen and so on.
• I went to that conference without any bag and I'd like to keep that freedom during the whole event.

I know how important it is for sponsors to distribute their goodies (and thus make the event viable) but I'm sure there is a way to let the attendee have that choice. That being said, maybe there is a better way for sponsors to promote their brand:

• Provide high quality goodies without an ostentatious logo, something that people will actually use (I still wear a beautiful t-shirt from DjangoConEu Berlin and I do appreciate the notebook offered to orators by ParisWeb last year for instance).
• Send people from your company to attend the conference or even participate (avoid product-driven keynotes, please), your employees are the best ambassadors of your brand but they have to be happy in their job to share their passion of course.
• Offer something valuable to the conference's attendees and explicitly ask to be named for that, for instance "This food is provided by FooInc who cares about the health of their actual and future employees".
• Think about ways to ease the integration and socialization of people during the conference, there is a lack of tools for that.

Original post of David Larlet.Votez pour ce billet sur Planet Libre.