anatomy of a truck event 4: stuff that takes care of itself...almost

with everything else i had to decide about the goings-on inside the truck, there were also the decisions about what type of stuff, if anything, we should have outside the truck.

remember...for home-grown events, you as the host are totally responsible for any and all associated costs.

to help keep things simple for our event, it was decided to just have basic refreshments:

• coffee, hot chocolate, soft drinks & water
• cookies
  

of course, even basic refreshments still meant things like:

• cups
• napkins
• coolers
• ice
• coffee pots
• cream, sugar & stir sticks
  
• electricity

besides refreshments, we planned to distribute:

• marketing collateral/brochures
• giveaway mousepads
• our business cards

and...we needed a way to collect one of the following for our major giveaway:

• client and prospect business cards
• fill-in cards

also...i wanted to be sure and have some kind of cover no matter what direction the weather took. finally, there always needs to be some branded signage hanging for folks to see.

all of which required:

• a tent
• boat anchors...to keep the aformentioned tent from suddenly taking flight
• long extension cords
• outlet strip
• tables
• table skirt
• locked comment/card box
• index cards
• pen
• chairs
• banner
• foamboard sign
• plastic hooks
• fishing line

of course, all this was ably handled by amy, also known as cher by regular visitors to the funcave.

so...from my perspective...this stuff did seem to take care of itself!

except for...the issue of staffing.

obviously, we had at least 1 of our folks in the truck at all times. sometimes 2, depending on the crowd, even tho it was nigh impossible to show more than 1 thing at a time in the truck we had. we also had someone at the table outside at all times.

for lunch, amy ordered box lunches for all our folks working the event, and one for each for the microsoft folks. that made it much easier on them, since they didn't have to try to find a decent place to eat in a strange town, and helped keep the coverage on the truck high during lunchtime, since that was a fairly popular time for folks to come visit.

on to part 5