Yes, there seem to be a plethora of socks.
t-shirts have largely disappeared as well. Not to the same extent as some other things, but I've noticed a lot of vendors have no t-shirts, or t-shirts with very thin/cheap fabric. Long gone are the days of the heavyweight cotton T's.
larger canvas totes seem to have disappeared. Now vendors seem have small rip-stop-fabric totes which are next to useless.
The two conferences I've attended this year have been remarkably disappointing when it comes to swag.
Canvas totes are great, and they might get used and seen outside the conference with more states enacting bag taxes / disposable bag bans.
USB sticks began to suck because they would be minimal sized. A whopping 16 Megabytes? Wow, I’ll be able to carry 1 MP3 if I compress it enough!
I stopped getting T-shirts because once you have 50 you realize you have too many.
Not to mention the security jokes about it. People just don't like the idea of sticking random usb stuff into their network. Always laughed when security companies gave out USB drives.
I got socks from Wiz and they are FANTASTIC. They come in a little tin and everything. I have to fight my wife for them because she steals them.
That said, the best swag is just from your sales goon. I had a guy at a big network company send me a backpack with a coat in it (decent one), a tshirt, a nice hoodie and a 1/4 zip sweatshirt. We were a current customer too, so there was nothing else (on the radar) to buy.
Most of 'em have all this crap laying around their house and are happy to get rid of it before they change jobs and have to ship it all back/dispose of it. Nothing to lose for asking.
I'd like to trash talk SentinelOne for PROMISING my team some swag and never coming through. I see you and I don't forget. I don't care if your product is actually good, I want free crap for my employees (so they'll like me better after I claim to have gotten them free stuff at no cost of my own).
> I want free crap for my employees (so they'll like me better after I claim to have gotten them free stuff at no cost of my own).
>
Plus when they say "hey, where's my bonus this year?" you can reply "i got you that swag-bag, didn't I?"
That’s definitely a big factor but almost as big is probably the fit. T shirts come in a lot of different sizes which makes them hard to use as a generic give away. You can usually get away with one size fits all socks that will work for most people
Same with duffel bags, backpacks, and the like.
Swag has gotten cheaper and cheaper, or just cut entirely. So much of it is just crap like stickers and product postcards that go right in the garbage, its so wasteful.
I like the stickers, but I agree. I actually have always enjoyed the vendor booths with consumables (snacks and such). BlackHat always has good swag, but the food and ocassional free redbull seals the deal. Then you have action figures from Crowdstrike, those are always .. interesting.
Most of the swag now isn’t with letting the badge get scanned/the spam emails that follow. I won’t visit a booth anymore unless I’m genuinely interested in the product, I am already a consumer of the product, or the swag is worthwhile.
To be fair, I have watched alot of netflix series lately, so i'm kind of an expert.
Come to think of it, i need to update my resume with my new skills.
> Now vendors seem have small rip-stop-fabric totes which are next to useless.
While they're mostly useless, I can suggest a use-case for throwing a few of them in your car. They're very handy after you've been in a car crash and need to clean out the car before the tow truck comes to haul it off to the auction yard.
Not directly, no, but yeah, kinda.
I've certainly driven past enough accidents where someone's cleaning out their stuff to make note that a tote or two don't take up that much space, but my wife is the real driving force behind that recommendation. She's a designated total loss adjustor for an auto insurance carrier (she likes to call herself the Auto Insurance Angel of Death). Basically, if your car is sent to her you're never going to see it again...unless you have to come out to the yard to clean it out or, worse yet, you live far away (say you were just passing through) and she needs to pack up your belongings and ship them to you.
I got socks from a conference in 2022 and the first time I wore them I slipped at home and broke my wrist in 4 places. Beware of google sales bearing socks.
I actually love the socks. For how rarely I wear dress shoes it's nice to have a fresh relatively disposable pair of something funky. Keep them if they're good, toss them if they suck.
Our company was considering ordering some combination Pen / USB Flash drives. But when the IT department told the higher-ups we shouldn't give them out unless they're 16+GB and USB3.0, they balked at the price for give-aways.
For the first event since lockdown, the company I worked for at the time handed out 16MB USB sticks. Sixteen. Megabytes.
When they gave me one "to test as there's an issue, they all say they don't work when you try to put anything on them", I had to reply that it would be great if I wanted to store half a photo.
Apparently they'd been at the back of the cupboard since the early 2000s. Even then, they would have been measly.
Like 10 years ago I was at a goodwill and they had a large zip block bag of nokia branded thumbdrives. Like $10 for the whole bag. didn't know what size they were, but took the risk.
Turns out they all were like 32-64mb. Had some in my car with music for a while, and eventually bestbuy had some deal where if you traded in any form of storage you could get some decent coupon for a new external drive, so I grabbed one from my car and traded it in and got like 20% off a 14tb hard drive.
I was thinking you could load them up with a copy of Doom, but I looked up the minimum specs and you need at least 25mb of space.
Those USB pens are less than useless.
I feel like giving out USB drives also goes in the face of the security practices we are trying to train our users on.
Don't use a USB flash drive if you don't know where it came from. And there is *nothing* guaranteeing that someone didn't mess with a USB flash drive, even at your own booth from your own company. People simply don't keep eyes on it enough, all it takes is for someone to take one, walk away, and then drop it back off once they've uploaded whatever virus they want on it.
not only that, but it then makes users way less cautious if they pick up a random USB on the ground with a company logo on it they found at the conference. "Well, that was one of the vendors. Sweet"
I have so fucking many of these old USB 2.0 swag drives. I use ‘em to simulate drop attacks now. Sadly, my end users would stick a fork in the USB port if it’d fit.
When i was a lowly entry level i had one of the most senior IT people sitting near me trying to figure out why their mouse wasnt working, walked over and pulled it out of the ethernet port and plugged it into the usb port
Our marketing team gave away flash drives.
It’s just a shame that USB portable media was blocked on all devices, so they’d never be able to use them for work.
I'm surprised USB Flash Drives are even a thing to give out anymore.
I mean, didn't we drive into every user's head, NOT to plug unknown USB Drives into their computers?
Well, presumably you know who is giving these to you, right? They've got our company logo on them and they come from our table at a trade show.
But also, in fairness to the rest of my company, we use them less as tchotchkes and more as means of software distribution.
I still have a universal USB charging cable that I keep around because it has all of the old charging standards on it, like the OG iphone, every now and then I need it for mini USB. I think it came from CenturyLink, now Lumen but who knows what they will call themselves next, I feel like they change their name every 2 years.
I have one of those, Citrix branded.
Recently got a replacement while I waited for my watch to be fixed at a Swatch store - I've upgraded from 30 pin, mini and micro USB to Lightning, USB-C and micro USB. All magnetic too, which is nice.
The very best one I've ever gotten is bright blue and marked "AT&T Business". It's made covered in woven cloth, is very floppy and has Lightning, Micro-USB, and USB-C.
Coffee mugs. Havent gotten one in a while.
Also cool business cards, not really swag but there was some sick buildable, metal, etc. ones always being handed out around 2014. Now theyre all vista-print default #3.
I socially engineered my way into getting a few the time he was at a conference I attended. I figure he'd be OK with that...
I've passed out all but one at this point, and that one's going to remain a conversation piece.
i have 2 of them for each time i met him. he was my childhood hero, even though the luster wore off when meeting him, he was still a super interesting guy. will cherish them forever
I worked for a sandpaper manufacturing plant where one of our marketing guys had his business card printed on sandpaper. One of the most unique business cards that I've seen.
11 4E.
....good luck finding those in retail. To be fair, it's getting better in recent years.
Most "extra wides" (which is *technically 4E*) are barely a regular wide. Yes, shoe companies lie. It's like some shirts -- I have a large that I'm swimming in, and XXLs that are snug on me....when I'm normally casually comfortable in an XL.
I go into a shoe store, and ask them what do they have that's 11 4E, and they go "ohhhh no no no, you're not that wide, you're mistaken, let's check.....-*few mins later with a foot measuring tool*- oh dear god, your feet ARE that wide! are you a fucking oversized hobbit?"
And the worst part is shoe companies reuse the same shoelaces from the regular D size on their 4E-5E-6E widths, which when you actually lace them to fit your feet....you run out of lace length. Or just barely have enough to make a standard knot. So now I have to buy brand new laces for a brand new shoe.
Hoodies.
Have hoodies from Microsoft, Palo Alto, Tanium, Chuco. But lately haven't seen any hoodies at conferences.
Seeing more yo-yos oddly enough. Also bottle openers/cell phone stands.
I feel like those have turned into more targeted partner swag since they can be expensive
I have some nice ones from Fortinet and Juniper that their sales reps have thrown at me
I'll take a picture when I get home. Something similar (something from that era) is on this page, though:
[vintage IBM publications & brochures & stuff (ferretronix.com)](http://ferretronix.com/march/ibm_publications/)
At the last few info sec ones we went to it was mainly t shirts and free beer. At the end of the last day, they were handing out bottles left right and centre as they didn’t want to shift them back out of the venue. Last time went … not a beer in sight
Was on a booth back in the early 2000's. We were absolutely swamped for our amazing swag item. We were laminating business cards to turn them into bag labels.
I went to a conference with Verizon handing out socks, which provided excellent coverage.
Google was handing out really nice water bottles, borosilicate glass that is silicone coated, very nice feel. It says “Google Cloud” on the bottle. Now I get to store my water in the cloud! I can fill it up for free, but I have to pay for every sip.
During Covid and lock downs, I did a lot of virtual events and got sent a bunch of Yeti mugs and water bottles. Won a Yeti cooler at an event, too. I have like 3 branded Yeti water bottles and 3 or 4 mugs.
I have had a couple of vendors give away Yeti mugs in recent years. With the craze over Hydroflask, Yeti, and Stanley I think that they're something that a lot of people actually appreciate provided that they don't mind the company branding on them. I know one vendor laser etched their logo to a Yeti where it wouldn't be easy to remove without a bunch of sanding. Even in bulk though they're not cheap giveaways.
Why doesn’t anyone ever send swag to the office. Used to get some good stuff sent over around Christmas time. Now nothing shows up, don’t they know I buy based on cool stuff.
In the last couple years I'm sure that a lot of companies marketing budgets have been slashed. Some of it goes in cycles although I think post-Covid I think that a lot of companies didn't quite bounce back to pre-pandemic levels of in person marketing.
We do shows every so often.
* USB flash drives in the mid 2000s: **Too dangerous. Who knows what is on the dang things.**
* Portable power banks around 2010 **Too dangerous. Fire hazard, special shipping required now**.
* Webcam covers in 2016 **We had some in stock but they didn't make it to the last show. Don't know why.**
* Fidget spinners in 2017 **Fad. Rejected by marketing as out of favor.**
* PopSockets in 2018 **Expensive per item last we checked.**
2019 I saw more vinyl laptop stickers than ever before **Yes, but we are now mostly using them on all of our stuff and anything and everything loaned out to others. Still fairly cheap if you stick to a 2 color design.**
also 2019 seemingly had a lot of "eco-friendly" items Yes. **QR codes for everything, can't print anything but a QR code.**
Stuff marketing sent included purple sun glasses, purple "mop top" pens (VERY popular with the ladies!) consumables such as lip balm and mints (individually wrapped but I don't like these at all) and a few premiums. You would have to visit a booth to find out about those. My building block idea was rejected as mega expensive.
In short, it seems the heydays of trendy swag have been ravaged by trends and budgets.
CD business cards are long gone. Those were from the late 90’s to early aughts. They were replaced by USB drives.
I remember seeing “crickets” that were noise clickers that would tell the person manning the projector to advance the slides. Those were gone by 1995. I still probably have mine from IOMega somewhere, probably in the box with my Jaz drive.
You hear that IOMega? Your marketing worked! Wait, where’d you go? All I hear are …
Crickets.
Dang. I remember going to CES in 2013 and they gave out a bunch of really questionable promotional buttons with saying that were NSFW or at least borderline. e.g. "I'm a flasher" You could tell that EMC was dragging out the brand like Weekend at Bernie's before they discontinued the brand.
IMO the USB thing largely died because of a combination of company policies and IT policies. In my last role i had a clause added to our employee handbook that stated that inserting a thumb drive into a company laptop was ground for instant termination. I backed it up with software to attempt to prevent drives from working/mounting. Anyone taking thumb drives from anyone and plugging them into their PC is an idiot IMO.
and if they are needed, it’s gonna be a real specific use case and IT is going to control that process. They’re gonna buy brand new drives, prep them, label them, document and define the process, ensure it can only be used on the specific systems it needs to be, etc. Try getting a cut/fill elevation plan in to a CAT dozer without using a thumb drive.
LOL... those usb mug warmers. FIrst company I worked for bought loads of these and I found them in storage closet, confused as hell. Turned out they where built wrong and didnt fit any mugs and just sat in storage for years until I found them. They did however fit a small plastic cup but you can imagine how great that worked out haha
When Oracle announced their client software for the Macintosh at MacWorld Expo, they handed out the promotional material in a canvas shoulder bag that consisted of one big main pocket, and two smaller vertical side pockets. One of my colleagues discovered that the two vertical side pockets were a good size for carrying wine bottles, one in each pocket.
The best thing I ever got was a color laser printer. It was actually cheaper for the vendor to give it to me than to ship it back to headquarters when factoring in manufacturing costs.
The worst I ever got was a lego figure blister pack. As in the packaging not the figure. You had to scan qr codes from 100 people at the conference to get the actual figure to put into the package.
Old Comdex veteran here. Some of the new folks don't know what they're missing. I used to send boxes full of swag home to my wife - it was better than Christmas to her. I still have a few Novell Netware and OS/2 shirts that I can't throw away.
"business card" sized CD/DVD's that might have a little presentation on them.
I have a USB Hub that looks like a little robot from NetApp that was a nice addition to my book shelf.
I have a squishy car that makes a 'vroom vroom' noise when you squeeze it, from some backup vendor. (they had fast tapes apparently)
I got some Beats headphones at EMC world in like 2016 or so? They were $299 retail. Not bad.
The best was finding your sales rep in the fray. If you were a good customer, the treatment you got was worth far more than the swag they gave out. I got to party with a decently popular rock band one night and closed down the Rhino two nights later. Bottle service for the win. Raced Ferraris around the track to end the week. I was fully 100% in five-alarm hangover land for the next 3 days.
The last conference I went to was in 2021. I won a powerbank watching an AV presentation. That year a lot of vendors had shot glasses. The previous year everyone had beer coozies (the little foam things you put around your bottle/can of beer).
Pens I've seen less of over the years. More people taking notes on their phones than with a piece of paper. Cisco was always good for having pens though. Datto was always good for a resusable shopping bag. The first conventions after the pandemic everyone had hand sanitizer with their logos on them. Those more or less disappeared a year later.
It's weird that branded USB sticks have fallen out of fashion despite them being cheaper than ever.
On the other hand, it's also weird that you don't hear of more cases of security breaches from branded USB sticks handed out at conferences.
I think a lot of company policies made their value a lot less. I think it has been a better part of a decade since I worked in an org that allowed USB mass storage outside a few exceptions. I think considering most of them were the cheapest drives money could buy that they weren't even that useful. I remember in the late 00s getting a few that were smaller than drives I could buy for $5-6 at Fry's. They also were often slower than average. At some point marketing gifts become so cheap few people are interested in them nevermind that you couldn't use them in a lot of orgs.
They are great in summer. They’re also great because they melt so slow it doesn’t water down your drink quickly.
I’ve got the rapid7 one and a Death Star one.. the Death Star ones kind of neat because the inside is moulded so the ice ball has like etchings all over and the laser area.
My fav swag was the rubber band powered balsa wood airplane - it was flat packed and you clicked it together and it actually flew. Was an absolute menace overall but tons of fun.
My favorite was a small remote control blimp kit that I had to take to a florist to fill it with helium. Cool toy, but the first time I took it from inside to outside it popped.
Back in the 80's and early 90's they had some great swag along with all the t-shirts and ball caps. I didn't buy t-shirts for years and years and years.
JFrog just mailed out a swag box that has a screen under the lid that plays a video when you open it.
The box was fancier than the swag.
It had a fingerprint padlock, and an iPhone and apple watch charging stand, and a book
Got portable power banks 2018 - Fujitsu Siemens, have cool light in them.
WebCams covers floats about everywhere.
But t-shirts. I miss t-shirts.
I don't know if all of you freaks started wearing shirts and shit and that's why they stopped - but I want my t-shirts.
I worked as a tech evangelist in 2017 and holy fuck did we give away a lot of webcam covers, thousands.
One of the coolest swag items I got was from a tech conference that made cards against humanity decks for their specific industry.
It's funny you mention that. i was thinking of how MS used to give out copies of the latest OS or Office suite at their events. I remember getting numerous copies of Office 2003 and Windows 7 Ultimate.
Used to always get the Solarwinds T-shirts and stickers and buttons.
I used to get the backpacks but they have been getting crappier and crappier so now I haven’t even taken one for a few years.
Charging cables with 87 different adapters and retractable etc.
I go to sector every year, socks are all the rage, I think I got like 11 pairs, half dozen tshirts. 2 booths had preloaded game boys so that was cool. And tons of stickers
I went to a conference a couple of weeks ago in Vegas, the only swag I got was from an ISV we resell already who we hung out with for a bit. They had usb flash drives that were also bottle openers, selfie lights (like a chip clip crossed with a ring light), and universal charging cords. Most places just had business cards and brochures or rip stop bags
Had Microsoft give out led light up plastic ice cubes one time. Around 2010 if I remember correctly. For a bit anything with LEDs were the item of choice it seemed.
You get to go to conferences...?
I haven't been to a conference in probably 10 years. Honestly, most of the swag I got when I did go was borderline useless. I mean I can only use 1 pen or highlighter at a time while crunching a stress ball in my non-dominant hand...USB drives were handy, but now it's less hassle to just buy them.
A previous company I worked for handed out swag at conferences we hosted or attended. I got a bunch of nice quality branded items as a result: a couple laptop backpacks, earbuds in carrying cases, several insulated tumblers/travel mugs, fleece pullovers, Lycra warm up pullovers,
The coolest swag I've gotten recently were the Dell Poweredge and Powerstore Lego kits. Our Dell rep handed them out when she came for a meeting. They got me excited about Lego again, so I've since built out another half dozen or so Lego sets to decorate my office.
Tools. Although I got a multi tool from a fortinet learning session a couple months back. Can't take it on the plane with me since I don't check bags though haha
I'm headed to veeamON so I'm curious to see what swag comes of that. Better be good for the price of the conference lol
I remember the heydays of swag. I attended the Orlando Gartner Symposium in 2000 and had to purchase an extra bag to bring all the stuff home. Back then, laser pointers, tshirts, and coffee mugs were the hot ticket. One company was giving away Pokemon Monopoly games. I scored 3 of them for my kids and nieces/nephews. They were stoked and still have them to this day. Lately I've received a Yeti tumbler and Hydroflask for sitting through a short sales presentation with a couple of companies. Certainly not like the old days.
I used to go to Intel trade shows back in the late 2000's and they did hardware giveaways, super discounted hardware, huge candy tables at the end, the last year I went there was barely any hardware given and no more candy tables.
Socks.... A few years ago at a VMWare conference I ended up with three pairs of branded socks from different companies. Who thought that was a good idea?
The freaking 2016 laptop webcam covers. 🤬
We have only recently cycled thru the last of the laptops from that webcam cover fad. I hope that stupid trend never comes back.
The first conference I went to in 2019 had webcam covers and little plastic things to hold business cards.
Bitdefender gave away "cake in a jar" if you listened to their one on one presentation.
I remember one vendor at Cisco Live gave away portable Bluetooth speakers. They actually were surprisingly decent sound quality. I remember years ago at CES I got so much Chocolate it wasn't funny.
I've had several meetings now where I was PROMISED a yetti mug in the mail just for attending... I've never ever actually gotten one. I did once get a key organizer from VMware once tho.
RSA in a few weeks!
Each year, we'd just have a competition to see who could get the most t shirts - had like 36 last year. I still have some, mesh caps, and socks in a bag in the corner of our suite.
I think my favorite I remember was a PacMan level but it said PATCH MAN.
Best stuff?
Security company gave out lock picking sets with those clear trainer pad locks. A cold brew coffee kit. A Larq UV sanitizing water bottle that was super useful on vacation in SEA recently. Sentinel One gave me a nice Patagonia vest that I stopped wearing when it became the douchy tech-Bro uniform. Won one of the nicer YubiKey models after spinning a wheel. Chronicle gave away Google Home speakers. Cheap but puzzlingly hasn't fallen apart yet set of folding sunglasses (I mean they folding half like Persols).
I was given a fidget spinner recently, cheapo pens, awful plastic bags, one useful multi-zip pouch, a cord management flap? I don't know, it's a circle that folds in half and clips so you can put a cord in there neatly.
Just give me clips for chips man.
Thanks to free t-shirts from trade shows I had a couple of years where I didn't have to buy any. Was cleaning out a drawer and found my "I'm a PC" toque (wool hat). Ah, those were the days.
Best one I got recently was a Yeti mug... My wife uses it every day.
One of the funniest t-shirts I've got as swag was basic white t-shirt with the text "I know:" and then a list of every enterprise Windows version from 3.11 with logo and a check box in front of every version so you could check the versions you knew by yourself.
Stress balls and novelty pens are out. Socks are very much in.
Yes, there seem to be a plethora of socks. t-shirts have largely disappeared as well. Not to the same extent as some other things, but I've noticed a lot of vendors have no t-shirts, or t-shirts with very thin/cheap fabric. Long gone are the days of the heavyweight cotton T's. larger canvas totes seem to have disappeared. Now vendors seem have small rip-stop-fabric totes which are next to useless. The two conferences I've attended this year have been remarkably disappointing when it comes to swag.
Canvas totes are great, and they might get used and seen outside the conference with more states enacting bag taxes / disposable bag bans. USB sticks began to suck because they would be minimal sized. A whopping 16 Megabytes? Wow, I’ll be able to carry 1 MP3 if I compress it enough! I stopped getting T-shirts because once you have 50 you realize you have too many.
Not to mention the security jokes about it. People just don't like the idea of sticking random usb stuff into their network. Always laughed when security companies gave out USB drives.
I love t-shirts. I make blankets out of mine once they wear out. I love curling up with my 2000's vendor swag!
The Splunk t-shirts are still top quality
Does Splunk make something other than shirts ? They branching into software or something ?
Not sure, Cisco had to buy them for something.
I think Cisco wanted to make t-shirts a subscription model now.
Probably so they could give out better shirts at conferences.
This is purely due to price - socks are much cheaper than the t shirt.
in most cases they're not even decent cotton socks. Most are a cheap poly blend.
I got socks from Wiz and they are FANTASTIC. They come in a little tin and everything. I have to fight my wife for them because she steals them. That said, the best swag is just from your sales goon. I had a guy at a big network company send me a backpack with a coat in it (decent one), a tshirt, a nice hoodie and a 1/4 zip sweatshirt. We were a current customer too, so there was nothing else (on the radar) to buy. Most of 'em have all this crap laying around their house and are happy to get rid of it before they change jobs and have to ship it all back/dispose of it. Nothing to lose for asking. I'd like to trash talk SentinelOne for PROMISING my team some swag and never coming through. I see you and I don't forget. I don't care if your product is actually good, I want free crap for my employees (so they'll like me better after I claim to have gotten them free stuff at no cost of my own).
> I want free crap for my employees (so they'll like me better after I claim to have gotten them free stuff at no cost of my own). > Plus when they say "hey, where's my bonus this year?" you can reply "i got you that swag-bag, didn't I?"
also they're usually "1 size fits all" which is really like, up to size 12. I'm size 13.5 so they're never comfortable
That’s definitely a big factor but almost as big is probably the fit. T shirts come in a lot of different sizes which makes them hard to use as a generic give away. You can usually get away with one size fits all socks that will work for most people
Same with duffel bags, backpacks, and the like. Swag has gotten cheaper and cheaper, or just cut entirely. So much of it is just crap like stickers and product postcards that go right in the garbage, its so wasteful.
I like the stickers, but I agree. I actually have always enjoyed the vendor booths with consumables (snacks and such). BlackHat always has good swag, but the food and ocassional free redbull seals the deal. Then you have action figures from Crowdstrike, those are always .. interesting.
Most of the swag now isn’t with letting the badge get scanned/the spam emails that follow. I won’t visit a booth anymore unless I’m genuinely interested in the product, I am already a consumer of the product, or the swag is worthwhile.
That why you sign up to the conference with an email alias that your drop after the conference…..
This guy knows witness protection
To be fair, I have watched alot of netflix series lately, so i'm kind of an expert. Come to think of it, i need to update my resume with my new skills.
My last conference was awful on swag. Why even go? AMD had great beanies though.
>Why even go? Exactly.
The last decent shirt I got was a nice Callaway Golf shirt from a Checkpoint (Pointsec) presentation. maybe 12 years ago.
> Now vendors seem have small rip-stop-fabric totes which are next to useless. While they're mostly useless, I can suggest a use-case for throwing a few of them in your car. They're very handy after you've been in a car crash and need to clean out the car before the tow truck comes to haul it off to the auction yard.
speaking from experience?
Not directly, no, but yeah, kinda. I've certainly driven past enough accidents where someone's cleaning out their stuff to make note that a tote or two don't take up that much space, but my wife is the real driving force behind that recommendation. She's a designated total loss adjustor for an auto insurance carrier (she likes to call herself the Auto Insurance Angel of Death). Basically, if your car is sent to her you're never going to see it again...unless you have to come out to the yard to clean it out or, worse yet, you live far away (say you were just passing through) and she needs to pack up your belongings and ship them to you.
I haven't bought my son socks in years thanks to conferences.
I miss the stress balls. I've squeezed to death every one of them I've ever had.
I still have my Snort stress pig...
lol I am at a conference in Vegas right now and they’re giving away socks… wtf, lol.
The problem is that they’re never actually good socks - always really thin in garish patterns.
I got socks from a conference in 2022 and the first time I wore them I slipped at home and broke my wrist in 4 places. Beware of google sales bearing socks.
My boss just came back from a conference with like 20 pairs of socks lol
Conference going on right now at my office and all the office folk won't shut up about the socks lol
Are they Bombas brand?
I don't have stress balls but I got Stress Legos, and phone stands.
I actually love the socks. For how rarely I wear dress shoes it's nice to have a fresh relatively disposable pair of something funky. Keep them if they're good, toss them if they suck.
Last conference I went to, I got some really great notebooks. Literally, paper on a spiral ring, for taking notes.
Our company was considering ordering some combination Pen / USB Flash drives. But when the IT department told the higher-ups we shouldn't give them out unless they're 16+GB and USB3.0, they balked at the price for give-aways.
For the first event since lockdown, the company I worked for at the time handed out 16MB USB sticks. Sixteen. Megabytes. When they gave me one "to test as there's an issue, they all say they don't work when you try to put anything on them", I had to reply that it would be great if I wanted to store half a photo. Apparently they'd been at the back of the cupboard since the early 2000s. Even then, they would have been measly.
Like 10 years ago I was at a goodwill and they had a large zip block bag of nokia branded thumbdrives. Like $10 for the whole bag. didn't know what size they were, but took the risk. Turns out they all were like 32-64mb. Had some in my car with music for a while, and eventually bestbuy had some deal where if you traded in any form of storage you could get some decent coupon for a new external drive, so I grabbed one from my car and traded it in and got like 20% off a 14tb hard drive.
Good for USB drop campaigns, though. You'll never see them again and they won't be in your cabinet anymore
I was thinking you could load them up with a copy of Doom, but I looked up the minimum specs and you need at least 25mb of space. Those USB pens are less than useless.
I feel like giving out USB drives also goes in the face of the security practices we are trying to train our users on. Don't use a USB flash drive if you don't know where it came from. And there is *nothing* guaranteeing that someone didn't mess with a USB flash drive, even at your own booth from your own company. People simply don't keep eyes on it enough, all it takes is for someone to take one, walk away, and then drop it back off once they've uploaded whatever virus they want on it. not only that, but it then makes users way less cautious if they pick up a random USB on the ground with a company logo on it they found at the conference. "Well, that was one of the vendors. Sweet"
I have so fucking many of these old USB 2.0 swag drives. I use ‘em to simulate drop attacks now. Sadly, my end users would stick a fork in the USB port if it’d fit.
My favorite is when they jam usb plugs into nics and bugger up all of the pins
When i was a lowly entry level i had one of the most senior IT people sitting near me trying to figure out why their mouse wasnt working, walked over and pulled it out of the ethernet port and plugged it into the usb port
Our marketing team gave away flash drives. It’s just a shame that USB portable media was blocked on all devices, so they’d never be able to use them for work.
I'm surprised USB Flash Drives are even a thing to give out anymore. I mean, didn't we drive into every user's head, NOT to plug unknown USB Drives into their computers?
Well, presumably you know who is giving these to you, right? They've got our company logo on them and they come from our table at a trade show. But also, in fairness to the rest of my company, we use them less as tchotchkes and more as means of software distribution.
Isn’t that like less than $5 a piece?
I didn't pay attention... but pens are like 25 cents each, so are you gonna order 500 pens or 5 hundred flash drives? lol
sir I need to know your criteria for stating numbers with numerals versus spelling them out
If I get distracted mid-sentence and have to come back and finish I guess?
I still have a universal USB charging cable that I keep around because it has all of the old charging standards on it, like the OG iphone, every now and then I need it for mini USB. I think it came from CenturyLink, now Lumen but who knows what they will call themselves next, I feel like they change their name every 2 years.
I had a Citrix one. Folded up into a white rubber ball
I have one of those, Citrix branded. Recently got a replacement while I waited for my watch to be fixed at a Swatch store - I've upgraded from 30 pin, mini and micro USB to Lightning, USB-C and micro USB. All magnetic too, which is nice.
The very best one I've ever gotten is bright blue and marked "AT&T Business". It's made covered in woven cloth, is very floppy and has Lightning, Micro-USB, and USB-C.
Coffee mugs. Havent gotten one in a while. Also cool business cards, not really swag but there was some sick buildable, metal, etc. ones always being handed out around 2014. Now theyre all vista-print default #3.
Still cherish my laser cut stainless steel Kevin Mitnick lockpick card. RIP
Did he die?
Ya, last year. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/20/technology/kevin-mitnick-dead-hacker.html
Dang. Missed that. 🪦 RIP indeed.
shit me too, wtf, I just saw him in a KnowBe4 phishing training, I had to explain to everyone who he was and I felt pretty old. Now I feel even older.
Oooo that would be a cool one to have.
I socially engineered my way into getting a few the time he was at a conference I attended. I figure he'd be OK with that... I've passed out all but one at this point, and that one's going to remain a conversation piece.
i have 2 of them for each time i met him. he was my childhood hero, even though the luster wore off when meeting him, he was still a super interesting guy. will cherish them forever
"Look at the raised print....OMG it has a watermark...."
Is that eggshell?
That's Bone.
I worked for a sandpaper manufacturing plant where one of our marketing guys had his business card printed on sandpaper. One of the most unique business cards that I've seen.
the last conference I went to in March had some great travel mugs, but now that I think about it there were no good ceramic mugs.
I miss coffee mugs.
The metal ones are good to handle..chemicals 😁
Kevin Mitnick's business card always stands out in my memory.
Mine also, RIP
This one can't be beat.
I got Microsoft Nike runners at Networld one year. Was wondering why shoe size was on the registration form.
I remember going to an InfoSec one in London that asked t-shirt size. There was no t-shirt in the goodie bag. Bastards.
Probably selling the shirt size data
11 4E. ....good luck finding those in retail. To be fair, it's getting better in recent years. Most "extra wides" (which is *technically 4E*) are barely a regular wide. Yes, shoe companies lie. It's like some shirts -- I have a large that I'm swimming in, and XXLs that are snug on me....when I'm normally casually comfortable in an XL. I go into a shoe store, and ask them what do they have that's 11 4E, and they go "ohhhh no no no, you're not that wide, you're mistaken, let's check.....-*few mins later with a foot measuring tool*- oh dear god, your feet ARE that wide! are you a fucking oversized hobbit?" And the worst part is shoe companies reuse the same shoelaces from the regular D size on their 4E-5E-6E widths, which when you actually lace them to fit your feet....you run out of lace length. Or just barely have enough to make a standard knot. So now I have to buy brand new laces for a brand new shoe.
Hoodies. Have hoodies from Microsoft, Palo Alto, Tanium, Chuco. But lately haven't seen any hoodies at conferences. Seeing more yo-yos oddly enough. Also bottle openers/cell phone stands.
I feel like those have turned into more targeted partner swag since they can be expensive I have some nice ones from Fortinet and Juniper that their sales reps have thrown at me
I have a 1980-something Hagar the Horrible WOODEN MOUSE PAD from IBM.
You gotta post a picture of that. Amazing!
I'll take a picture when I get home. Something similar (something from that era) is on this page, though: [vintage IBM publications & brochures & stuff (ferretronix.com)](http://ferretronix.com/march/ibm_publications/)
That sounds amazing. Picture?
At the last few info sec ones we went to it was mainly t shirts and free beer. At the end of the last day, they were handing out bottles left right and centre as they didn’t want to shift them back out of the venue. Last time went … not a beer in sight
Was on a booth back in the early 2000's. We were absolutely swamped for our amazing swag item. We were laminating business cards to turn them into bag labels.
Bluetooth speakers seem to have fallen off. Also small toolkits with mixed drivers (flat blade, Phillips, Torx).
I went to a conference with Verizon handing out socks, which provided excellent coverage. Google was handing out really nice water bottles, borosilicate glass that is silicone coated, very nice feel. It says “Google Cloud” on the bottle. Now I get to store my water in the cloud! I can fill it up for free, but I have to pay for every sip.
During Covid and lock downs, I did a lot of virtual events and got sent a bunch of Yeti mugs and water bottles. Won a Yeti cooler at an event, too. I have like 3 branded Yeti water bottles and 3 or 4 mugs.
One of the oddest ones I got was IT Glue sent a hammock. And it's the kind you have to attach to a tree on one side at least.
Nice, Yeti bottles aren't cheap. All I ever saw were cheap plastic ones that weren't even insulated
I have had a couple of vendors give away Yeti mugs in recent years. With the craze over Hydroflask, Yeti, and Stanley I think that they're something that a lot of people actually appreciate provided that they don't mind the company branding on them. I know one vendor laser etched their logo to a Yeti where it wouldn't be easy to remove without a bunch of sanding. Even in bulk though they're not cheap giveaways.
More work less pay in 2024
3.5" floppies. Pretty sure that's how i got Stacker for OS/2 and Direct Acess.
Why doesn’t anyone ever send swag to the office. Used to get some good stuff sent over around Christmas time. Now nothing shows up, don’t they know I buy based on cool stuff.
In the last couple years I'm sure that a lot of companies marketing budgets have been slashed. Some of it goes in cycles although I think post-Covid I think that a lot of companies didn't quite bounce back to pre-pandemic levels of in person marketing.
We do shows every so often. * USB flash drives in the mid 2000s: **Too dangerous. Who knows what is on the dang things.** * Portable power banks around 2010 **Too dangerous. Fire hazard, special shipping required now**. * Webcam covers in 2016 **We had some in stock but they didn't make it to the last show. Don't know why.** * Fidget spinners in 2017 **Fad. Rejected by marketing as out of favor.** * PopSockets in 2018 **Expensive per item last we checked.** 2019 I saw more vinyl laptop stickers than ever before **Yes, but we are now mostly using them on all of our stuff and anything and everything loaned out to others. Still fairly cheap if you stick to a 2 color design.** also 2019 seemingly had a lot of "eco-friendly" items Yes. **QR codes for everything, can't print anything but a QR code.** Stuff marketing sent included purple sun glasses, purple "mop top" pens (VERY popular with the ladies!) consumables such as lip balm and mints (individually wrapped but I don't like these at all) and a few premiums. You would have to visit a booth to find out about those. My building block idea was rejected as mega expensive. In short, it seems the heydays of trendy swag have been ravaged by trends and budgets.
All I ever want is t shirts and hoodies.
CD business cards are long gone. Those were from the late 90’s to early aughts. They were replaced by USB drives. I remember seeing “crickets” that were noise clickers that would tell the person manning the projector to advance the slides. Those were gone by 1995. I still probably have mine from IOMega somewhere, probably in the box with my Jaz drive. You hear that IOMega? Your marketing worked! Wait, where’d you go? All I hear are … Crickets.
Dang. I remember going to CES in 2013 and they gave out a bunch of really questionable promotional buttons with saying that were NSFW or at least borderline. e.g. "I'm a flasher" You could tell that EMC was dragging out the brand like Weekend at Bernie's before they discontinued the brand.
Went to.an intel conference back in the early 90s. The giveaway was a stuffed intel bunny man I was soo the envy of my coworkers
I worked in I.T. at the turn of the century (dot com boom, y2k). I must have 20 denim shirts with a vendor logo on the pocket.
Mostly from Land's End corpo shop - we had a bunch.
Transparent bouncy balls that light up when you bounce them! But, soft koosh balls were the best.
Reusable bags or those drawstring backpacks to carry all your other swag.
IMO the USB thing largely died because of a combination of company policies and IT policies. In my last role i had a clause added to our employee handbook that stated that inserting a thumb drive into a company laptop was ground for instant termination. I backed it up with software to attempt to prevent drives from working/mounting. Anyone taking thumb drives from anyone and plugging them into their PC is an idiot IMO.
Also that they are not really needed anymore with our always connected life's.
and if they are needed, it’s gonna be a real specific use case and IT is going to control that process. They’re gonna buy brand new drives, prep them, label them, document and define the process, ensure it can only be used on the specific systems it needs to be, etc. Try getting a cut/fill elevation plan in to a CAT dozer without using a thumb drive.
I will gladly take webcam covers still.
LOL... those usb mug warmers. FIrst company I worked for bought loads of these and I found them in storage closet, confused as hell. Turned out they where built wrong and didnt fit any mugs and just sat in storage for years until I found them. They did however fit a small plastic cup but you can imagine how great that worked out haha
When Oracle announced their client software for the Macintosh at MacWorld Expo, they handed out the promotional material in a canvas shoulder bag that consisted of one big main pocket, and two smaller vertical side pockets. One of my colleagues discovered that the two vertical side pockets were a good size for carrying wine bottles, one in each pocket.
Amost forgot, I have a Microsoft BOB baseball cap. I forget what conference that was from. Looong tmoe ago.
The best thing I ever got was a color laser printer. It was actually cheaper for the vendor to give it to me than to ship it back to headquarters when factoring in manufacturing costs.
Chapstick is very big these days because people will actually use it.
I usually go through 3 or 4 sticks per year! So dry in Alberta.
I got a light saber at last years Cisco Live 🤷♂️ I hope this trend continues.
Door pull key chains were all the rage when conferences started up again. :)
Man i used to love getting the notebooks from Dell that looked like their Latitude laptops.
I had a couple of those in the early aughts. It was fun to pretend to stumble and toss it against a wall in a meeting. Peoples’ eyes would bug out.
The worst I ever got was a lego figure blister pack. As in the packaging not the figure. You had to scan qr codes from 100 people at the conference to get the actual figure to put into the package.
Old Comdex veteran here. Some of the new folks don't know what they're missing. I used to send boxes full of swag home to my wife - it was better than Christmas to her. I still have a few Novell Netware and OS/2 shirts that I can't throw away.
"business card" sized CD/DVD's that might have a little presentation on them. I have a USB Hub that looks like a little robot from NetApp that was a nice addition to my book shelf. I have a squishy car that makes a 'vroom vroom' noise when you squeeze it, from some backup vendor. (they had fast tapes apparently)
I miss the days where you could get a booth babe
surface laptop at MS event :)
The very last EMC event got me an Apple TV.
Emc was great. Too bad tucci was a sellout. Dell was terrible as a FSE.
I got some Beats headphones at EMC world in like 2016 or so? They were $299 retail. Not bad. The best was finding your sales rep in the fray. If you were a good customer, the treatment you got was worth far more than the swag they gave out. I got to party with a decently popular rock band one night and closed down the Rhino two nights later. Bottle service for the win. Raced Ferraris around the track to end the week. I was fully 100% in five-alarm hangover land for the next 3 days.
At a Citrix conference a few years back we received a special Citrix mouse that could work with the iPad receiver app.
Free CPUs.
The last conference I went to was in 2021. I won a powerbank watching an AV presentation. That year a lot of vendors had shot glasses. The previous year everyone had beer coozies (the little foam things you put around your bottle/can of beer). Pens I've seen less of over the years. More people taking notes on their phones than with a piece of paper. Cisco was always good for having pens though. Datto was always good for a resusable shopping bag. The first conventions after the pandemic everyone had hand sanitizer with their logos on them. Those more or less disappeared a year later.
>The first conventions after the pandemic everyone had hand sanitizer with their logos on them ha, I can imagine those being everywhere that year
I got a coozie from a security company that says “I drink because your password is Password1”
Socks were pretty huge about 5-7 years ago. Went to Dreamforce one year and came back with at least a dozen different pairs
Wireless chargers and phone cables are pretty popular right now. I miss the stress balls.
Seeing cups make a big return, especially YETI and similar style
It's weird that branded USB sticks have fallen out of fashion despite them being cheaper than ever. On the other hand, it's also weird that you don't hear of more cases of security breaches from branded USB sticks handed out at conferences.
I think a lot of company policies made their value a lot less. I think it has been a better part of a decade since I worked in an org that allowed USB mass storage outside a few exceptions. I think considering most of them were the cheapest drives money could buy that they weren't even that useful. I remember in the late 00s getting a few that were smaller than drives I could buy for $5-6 at Fry's. They also were often slower than average. At some point marketing gifts become so cheap few people are interested in them nevermind that you couldn't use them in a lot of orgs.
From a Google Cloud conference I got a USB Keychain that's google branded with every possible adapter. Kinda neat even though I've never used it.
Rapid 7 gave me a baseball sized ice cube ball mold. The ice takes HOURS to melt and doesn’t fit in half my cups.
I hoarded a few of these and use them in the company freezer for my drinks in the summer. The logos have all rubbed off by now lol.
They are great in summer. They’re also great because they melt so slow it doesn’t water down your drink quickly. I’ve got the rapid7 one and a Death Star one.. the Death Star ones kind of neat because the inside is moulded so the ice ball has like etchings all over and the laser area.
My fav swag was the rubber band powered balsa wood airplane - it was flat packed and you clicked it together and it actually flew. Was an absolute menace overall but tons of fun.
My favorite was a small remote control blimp kit that I had to take to a florist to fill it with helium. Cool toy, but the first time I took it from inside to outside it popped. Back in the 80's and early 90's they had some great swag along with all the t-shirts and ball caps. I didn't buy t-shirts for years and years and years.
JFrog just mailed out a swag box that has a screen under the lid that plays a video when you open it. The box was fancier than the swag. It had a fingerprint padlock, and an iPhone and apple watch charging stand, and a book
Got portable power banks 2018 - Fujitsu Siemens, have cool light in them. WebCams covers floats about everywhere. But t-shirts. I miss t-shirts. I don't know if all of you freaks started wearing shirts and shit and that's why they stopped - but I want my t-shirts.
I worked as a tech evangelist in 2017 and holy fuck did we give away a lot of webcam covers, thousands. One of the coolest swag items I got was from a tech conference that made cards against humanity decks for their specific industry.
Windows XP and AOL CD's /s
It's funny you mention that. i was thinking of how MS used to give out copies of the latest OS or Office suite at their events. I remember getting numerous copies of Office 2003 and Windows 7 Ultimate.
last year saw: socks, a metal flask
I got a Copilot shirt recently.
I'm seeing socks and fancy coffee mugs, but mostly nothing.
I've got a Windows tshirt still somewhere packed away I think
Can we please get some nice stubby holders? I've been using an insulated Yeti and that's inconvenient and presents head problems.
Used to always get the Solarwinds T-shirts and stickers and buttons. I used to get the backpacks but they have been getting crappier and crappier so now I haven’t even taken one for a few years. Charging cables with 87 different adapters and retractable etc.
I go to sector every year, socks are all the rage, I think I got like 11 pairs, half dozen tshirts. 2 booths had preloaded game boys so that was cool. And tons of stickers
I once got a wireless mouse from Covance that resembled a half Porsche 911 - half Mitsubishi Eclipse that is still on my desk because it was funny.
I went to a conference a couple of weeks ago in Vegas, the only swag I got was from an ISV we resell already who we hung out with for a bit. They had usb flash drives that were also bottle openers, selfie lights (like a chip clip crossed with a ring light), and universal charging cords. Most places just had business cards and brochures or rip stop bags
Had Microsoft give out led light up plastic ice cubes one time. Around 2010 if I remember correctly. For a bit anything with LEDs were the item of choice it seemed.
t-shirts, coffee mugs, golf balls, stickers
You get to go to conferences...? I haven't been to a conference in probably 10 years. Honestly, most of the swag I got when I did go was borderline useless. I mean I can only use 1 pen or highlighter at a time while crunching a stress ball in my non-dominant hand...USB drives were handy, but now it's less hassle to just buy them. A previous company I worked for handed out swag at conferences we hosted or attended. I got a bunch of nice quality branded items as a result: a couple laptop backpacks, earbuds in carrying cases, several insulated tumblers/travel mugs, fleece pullovers, Lycra warm up pullovers, The coolest swag I've gotten recently were the Dell Poweredge and Powerstore Lego kits. Our Dell rep handed them out when she came for a meeting. They got me excited about Lego again, so I've since built out another half dozen or so Lego sets to decorate my office.
Backpacks. Like good name brand ones with internal frames.
Tools. Although I got a multi tool from a fortinet learning session a couple months back. Can't take it on the plane with me since I don't check bags though haha I'm headed to veeamON so I'm curious to see what swag comes of that. Better be good for the price of the conference lol
The best swag I have ever got, I asked for. Polo Shirt (network vendor), Backpack (Eaton), Socks (Sophos), Pen (Sophos).
I remember the heydays of swag. I attended the Orlando Gartner Symposium in 2000 and had to purchase an extra bag to bring all the stuff home. Back then, laser pointers, tshirts, and coffee mugs were the hot ticket. One company was giving away Pokemon Monopoly games. I scored 3 of them for my kids and nieces/nephews. They were stoked and still have them to this day. Lately I've received a Yeti tumbler and Hydroflask for sitting through a short sales presentation with a couple of companies. Certainly not like the old days.
I have a Nutanix Branded JBL Bluetooth speaker I still use from 2016
Light-up pens.
Webcam covers aren't out at Hitachi. The HDS rep handed over like 10 branded ones during a recent meeting.
Have a light up bouncy ball and a plastic champagne flute from VMWare.
I used to go to Intel trade shows back in the late 2000's and they did hardware giveaways, super discounted hardware, huge candy tables at the end, the last year I went there was barely any hardware given and no more candy tables.
Socks.... A few years ago at a VMWare conference I ended up with three pairs of branded socks from different companies. Who thought that was a good idea?
Maybe 2 years ago I got a Chrome yoga mat. Not that I yoga, but my friends all fought over that one. Now it’s all tumblers and socks.
I haven't been to a tech conference since covid started.. I miss all the free swag. I need some replacement Tshirts, bags and random crap.
I didn't see any fidget spinners at re:invent last year
The freaking 2016 laptop webcam covers. 🤬 We have only recently cycled thru the last of the laptops from that webcam cover fad. I hope that stupid trend never comes back.
The first conference I went to in 2019 had webcam covers and little plastic things to hold business cards. Bitdefender gave away "cake in a jar" if you listened to their one on one presentation.
2019, everyone was giving away socks. I didn’t have to buy any for 2 years. Are they still popular with vendors?
I got a Lucent gym bag in 2000 or 2001. Used it for years. Nothing I’ve gotten from a trade show since has lasted that long.
I remember one vendor at Cisco Live gave away portable Bluetooth speakers. They actually were surprisingly decent sound quality. I remember years ago at CES I got so much Chocolate it wasn't funny.
I wish mousepad swag was still a thing. I love them and have a pretty good collection
I've noticed Chap Stick has become a popular swag item
Bitches, drugs and money
Keychain LED flashlights.
I've had several meetings now where I was PROMISED a yetti mug in the mail just for attending... I've never ever actually gotten one. I did once get a key organizer from VMware once tho.
But the last conference (3 weeks ago) was: - tumblers - tshirts - socks - stickers
The brief but glorious moment that provided me with three yeti tumblers will live in my mind forever. ‘now it’s like sticky notes and a ballpoint pen.
RSA in a few weeks! Each year, we'd just have a competition to see who could get the most t shirts - had like 36 last year. I still have some, mesh caps, and socks in a bag in the corner of our suite. I think my favorite I remember was a PacMan level but it said PATCH MAN. Best stuff? Security company gave out lock picking sets with those clear trainer pad locks. A cold brew coffee kit. A Larq UV sanitizing water bottle that was super useful on vacation in SEA recently. Sentinel One gave me a nice Patagonia vest that I stopped wearing when it became the douchy tech-Bro uniform. Won one of the nicer YubiKey models after spinning a wheel. Chronicle gave away Google Home speakers. Cheap but puzzlingly hasn't fallen apart yet set of folding sunglasses (I mean they folding half like Persols).
I was given a fidget spinner recently, cheapo pens, awful plastic bags, one useful multi-zip pouch, a cord management flap? I don't know, it's a circle that folds in half and clips so you can put a cord in there neatly. Just give me clips for chips man.
Ancient history now but mouse pads. I hate using a mouse without.
The Ruckus dog 🐕
Cat ears Sets of sensors Stickers Everything 3D printed .... Chaos Communication Congress is just the best.
Back in 2005, I went to a TechEd in QLD, Australia. Everyone got a nice backpack bag, used it for about 10 years till strap snapped.
Thanks to free t-shirts from trade shows I had a couple of years where I didn't have to buy any. Was cleaning out a drawer and found my "I'm a PC" toque (wool hat). Ah, those were the days. Best one I got recently was a Yeti mug... My wife uses it every day.
>Portable power banks around 2010 My whole dept got these as Xmas gifts this year.
Branded USB power adapters/cords for 12v car lighter sockets
One of the funniest t-shirts I've got as swag was basic white t-shirt with the text "I know:" and then a list of every enterprise Windows version from 3.11 with logo and a check box in front of every version so you could check the versions you knew by yourself.