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Post by VECTREXER on Sept 29, 2022 11:05:20 GMT -5
A copy for a call for a Secret Santa 2022 coordinator posted in the "Vectrex Fans Unite!" group on Facebook. I think the hope is to expand and include members on Vector Forums (https://vectorgaming.proboards.com/board/20/vectrex) and AtariAge (https://forums.atariage.com/forum/182-vectrex/) into Secret Santa this year. So if anyone is up for the joy and on all three platforms please jump in. www.facebook.com/groups/vectrex/posts/1928977900645911/"It'll be time to start organizing this year's Secret Santa in a week or two. I did the first one and Just Noah did the second one, so if we're doing it this year it would be cool if someone else would step up and take the reins. Volunteers? There's not a great deal of work involved, it's primarily just keeping track of mailing deadlines and prodding everyone occasionally."  |
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Post by gtoal on Sept 29, 2022 12:18:06 GMT -5
If we do expand the community, the coordinator will have to be someone in all 3 groups. It won't work if the person wrangling everyone is one of the folks who won't use facebook under any circumstances!
For those of us here who are not also FB users, what we did over the last couple of years was this: everyone declares how many presents they'd like to contribute (within a small upper limit) and we arrange that everyone receives as many as they contribute, but if possible from someone else rather than a straight swap. We suggested a notional $5 - $10 value on gifts but several of the contributions last year turned out to be much nicer than expected! Everything should be Vectrex-related in some way, but the range was quite wide from stickers and cartridge labels through home-made overlays and presentation boxes to actual cartridges of home-brew games. I think I also saw some laser-cut Christmas-tree ornaments. Just to give you some ideas. We try to optimise shipping costs by clustering European users separately from USA users, but you can say if you're up for paying transatlantic postage rates and a few people may be paired with someone from another continent if we can't find enough matches locally which tended to happen with last-minute additions. (We have a rather hacky program that helps match people up.) The earlier we can firm up the numbers the easier it is to make the allocations. To avoid any one person having to collect everyone's addresses, that part is distributed and we just ask each recipient to send their address to their Santa. So it's not entirely secret but doing it that way avoids a GDPR nightmare.
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Post by Peer on Sept 29, 2022 14:23:45 GMT -5
… The earlier we can firm up the numbers the easier it is to make the allocations. To avoid any one person having to collect everyone's addresses, that part is distributed and we just ask each recipient to send their address to their Santa. So it's not entirely secret but doing it that way avoids a GDPR nightmare. I am not sure if I got the procedure correctly, but would the following work to make it a truly secret Santa (for the recipient)? Assumption: Your hacky program generates a set of allocations (sender S, recipient R). Instead of sending R a message, asking them to send their address to S, let your Programm assign to each (S, R) another participant P, and then send to P the email addresses of S and R and assign to P the following task: „send a message R and ask for their address, once your got it, send this address to S“. Slightly more effort for each participant (and for your program), but also more secrecy. If such is wanted… |
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Post by gtoal on Sept 29, 2022 18:17:12 GMT -5
Assumption: Your hacky program generates a set of allocations (sender S, recipient R). Instead of sending R a message, asking them to send their address to S, let your Programm assign to each (S, R) another participant P, and then send to P the email addresses of S and R and assign to P the following task: „send a message R and ask for their address, once your got it, send this address to S“. That could be made to work, but how the thing is arranged will be up to whoever runs it this year. I think it's important to have someone different run it each year. That way it becomes a community thing that has a life of its own. A new organiser every year means new ideas and keeps it fresh. Like how last year VECTREXER suggested we include the other two Vectrex groups this time. Are you interested? It really doesn't matter what country the uber-santa lives in :-) |
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Post by gtoal on Sept 29, 2022 21:29:46 GMT -5
some of the presents from the last 2 years Secret Santa exchanges!:   |
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Post by Peer on Sept 30, 2022 2:46:04 GMT -5
... Are you interested? It really doesn't matter what country the uber-santa lives in :-) The whole things sounds awesome, but I am neither on Facebook nor on AtariAge. |
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Post by hcmffm on Oct 19, 2022 11:25:31 GMT -5
Thanks for the photos, Graham. T Shirts, Japanese Cosmic Chasm, aluminum cartridge, and even an Vectrex Service manuel - wow!
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