PePcon Swag Collection

I have been attending the Print and ePublishing conference since it's inaugural year in 2010. Along the way, I have accumulated conference swag from the conference as it traveled across the county each year.

The first PePcon brought simple swag, including this light-up flash drive.

Flash Drive, Seattle 2010

At PePcon #1, I also opted to purchase a conference T-shirt.

PePcon T-shirt, Seattle 2010

One interesting piece of memorabilia isn't actually PePcon swag, but I'm including it in this list because I got it at PePcon. And I am the only PePcon attendee who has one. Russell Viers spoke at PePcon in 2010 (as he does every year) and he was wearing a custom mechanic shirt featuring his ACE logos on the arm. After his session, during the break, I commented to him that I liked his shirt. Without missing a beat, he said, "You want it? I got a bunch of them made up." I was a little taken aback, but I said yes anyway. And so now I have a Russell shirt.

Custom Adobe Mechanic shirt from Russell Viers 

Adobe Patches

Subsequent PePcons frequently featured a variety of kitchen gadgets, such as a jar opener, a fridge magnet, and a pan scraper.

PePcon 2011 and subsequent all featured a drinking vessel of some sort. The first conference logo was in Trajan.

2011, Seattle

2011, Seattle

2012 brought new branding. Very nice!

2012, San Francisco

2013, Austin

2014, Chicago

I also got a lovely 18" long polystyrene ruler with six different units of measurement, including agates and ciceros! 

2013, Austin

Five of my items are speaker gifts. The first four years of PePcon, I spoke at Ignite! InDesign (which is a type of open mic night, where brave souls get 5 minutes to speak with slides auto-advancing every 15 seconds behind them). Sometimes the Ignite speakers get their own special swag. Other times, it's the same as what the main session speakers get.

2010: Magnet (Ignite speakers only)

2011: Speaker bag (same as main session speakers)

2012: Umbrella (Ignite speakers only)

2012: Umbrella (Ignite speakers only)

2013: "Where the Weird Things Are" T-shirt (same as main session speakers)

In 2014, they finally let me speak on the Big Stage! The official conference speakers get a few extra goodies in their conference bag, and this fleece beanie was one of them.

2014, Fleece Beanie

 Also acquired in 2014 was a name badge with the special red SPEAKER ribbon on the bottom!

2014 Attendee (and SPEAKER) badge

All the swag comes in a conference bag. I only have one of them left.

Some of the swag from PePcon isn't tangible goods, but rather software and plugins. Often, the various InDesign software developers who exhibit at the conference will offer some sort of coupon code if you visit their table. 2010 PePcon was where I got my first copy of TeaCup PatternMaker, which launched me into several years of blogging about making patterns in InDesign.

This list doesn't even include all the notepads, pens, styluses, and other similar goodies that show up in the bags every year. Some vendors also offer their own logo'd swag at their tables, such as insulated drinking cups and iPad stands.

I do hope you'll join me at PePcon. Also note that David and Anne-Marie, the wonderful people behind PePcon, are now putting on other conferences as well, including The InDesign Conference and The Photoshop Conference (which in 2015 will be held concurrently and at the same location as The InDesign Conference).

See you at PePcon!

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Edit 3-19-14
I found another piece of PePcon swag! I'm pretty sure this one if from Chicago in 2014, but I'm not entirely sure. I remember thinking how nice it was to have conference pens, because for the first few years the pens were hotel-branded, rather than conference-branded.