At the upcoming Open edX Conference, tCRIL will be handing out awards to highlight significant contributions for one specific member in every community working group. The conference planning committee is looking for prize ideas, and since we’re an international team, I figured we might have good ideas. What do you think?
edit. One caveat is that their legal team requires them to buy a specific gift, not just “dollars for anything” (i.e. no Amazon cards). A gift card for “an experience” works.
Here are some ideas:
Airbnb gift cards, which can be used for lodging or for experiences virtually anywhere in the world
Shipping prizes – maybe a service like the one used by @antoviaque for sending us snacks around Christmas in 2021?
Esteban from Aulasneo suggested Virgin Experiences (the name makes me cringe), but it looks like it’s restricted to a handful of countries only.
I suggested that tCRIL make a donation to a non-profit or charity of the recipients’ choosing, but they prefer handing out actual prizes.
@antoviaque, since you’ve been a “real” nomad for a long time now, maybe you have ideas?
Is there an option of letting winners choose their prize, rather than trying hard to select a one-size-fits-all? For example if given the non-profit donation, I would choose that.
@gabriel Imho when the goal is recognition of contributions, gifts with a monetary value can actually be distracting from the real value: the recognition itself by the community. I would focus gifts or budgets on maximizing that – maybe make it an actual physical award, like an Emmy in the shape of Open edX? That could be something good to put in an office desk, which reminds of the recognition every time we look at it, or show it to someone else…
In terms of nomading, one thing with physical objects is that they take space. :) So I’ve asked GPT for some virtual alternatives, and he actually had some pretty good recommendations, especially considering the field we are in:
We could spend the money designing something very nice - maybe even representing the individual winners on each digital certificate/badge, for something truly personalized and special. We also have pretty prestigious institutions benefiting from Open edX - maybe a MIT or Harvard certificate would be nice, a special edition of what is being distributed to students who follow Open edX courses?
A recording of the public shoutout & award acceptance at the conference would be pretty sweet in addition to that, too.
Like in the shape of the logo? That could work, or one of those laser etched glass placards, or a normal gold-colored plated one.
Part of selecting the best award might be surveying people ahead of time-- which would probably mean having nominations and collecting preferences as part of that process. But in doing so we’d know who has what preference-- if I were receiving an award, a placard would be good for me because I have a house. But it’d be one more thing to carry around for someone like you.
Of course, it might be too late to start a nomination process. If that’s the case then if we want to avoid tipping off the winner, someone would probably need to have the job of being a sneaky intelligence gatherer and asking their coworkers.
Thanks for the great input! My personal preference would also have been either the non-profit thing or focusing more on the recognition itself, but so far the working group has a preference for offering a gift. I’ll share your ideas and see what they say. Good idea to involve GPT ;)
