Secret Santa 2016

[doobes]

Secret Santa wrap-up

Good morning all.  Now that Secret Santa 2016 is over, well almost, I thought that a wrap up was in order.

In doing the processing I noticed that we had a bit fewer participants that the prior year. Unfortunately in my naivete I overwrote the 2015 info so can't provide specific statistics. We did get a late-ish start which I don't know if it was an influencing factor.

Question for those who did and did not participate: 

Would an earlier start have been conducive to more participation?

The actual process went fairly smoothly with a couple of exceptions:

• Your humble servant sent the wrong recipient/address to one of the givers.  Luckily one of our elves stepped in to resolve my brain damage.
  
• We had one of the givers who signed up go off into LaLa land. Luckily another one of Santa's elves jumped in to save the day.  This hasn't completely been completed thus the comment in the opening sentence. A note was made of the individual in question so he will be excluded in future SS programs.
  

On our end things went pretty smoothly. Cloudy was a big help, but at the end of the day I'm not certain it's really helpful to have another set of hands in the fray. In any event, thank you Cloudy and Arlin for being tremendous elves.

Other than the sign up sheet, the process is/was mostly manual.  In the off season, I will look at tweaking the process and adding some automation to reduce the opportunity for operator error. Additionally, all e-mailing will be done from the SS G-Mail account instead of my personal e-mail.  Again, that should make data collection/management/archival easier for me and the lucky cuss that gets to follow in my footsteps.

I throw this out to the group: 

What would make the Secret Santa process easier/better/faster/whatever?

Thanks again to everyone who helped and participated.

cheers,

[Scoony]

From my perspective, it went very smoothly. I felt that the timing was just right and an earlier start may cause more fudge to fall off the radar.

[jppierson]

I thought you did an excellent job, and all went smooth. Just a reminder, that good manners highly suggests that recipients at least acknowledge their gift with a thank you. I look forward to participating again next year.

[Arlin Eastman]

I thought you did an excellent job, and all went smooth.  Just a reminder, that good manners highly suggests that recipients at least acknowledge their gift with a thank you.  I look forward to participating again next year.

Also that the Gift must be sent.  It seems since I have been doing this every year there is someone who does not send out their gift to someone.

To me this is a scammer and I am quite tired of them.  I am going to suggest new rules to make sure we no longer get them.

[Anak]

Thank you Chris and Cloudy for a job done well.

I suspect declining participation is going to be the nature of the future for a while.  I expect the Christmas auction was down as well.  There certainly seemed to be less bidding, at least to me.  That is the subject of a discussion on a larger scale.

I think the start time is pretty good right where it is.  I don't see how a change of start time would affect participation numbers.  I think most all of us are aware that it will come up each fall.

The quality of this tradition is entirely dependent on the quality of the participants.  We are blessed in that there are as many quality folks here as there are.  Finding a bad apple here and there reminds us that we really do have a great group of folks.

[Bibliophile 13]

Chris, I just want to say thanks to you and Cloudy for making Secret Santa happen. I think the start time is just fine--if you're going to send a gift, a 1-month lead time should be plenty. For my part, more time would just give me longer to procrastinate.

I have one or two suggestions, but I'll be sending those via PM.

[Arlin Eastman]

We would like any and all suggestions for how to run this in the future and I think I speak for Chris that all other individuals who were part of the leaders in the past would really help also for what they seen also or would like to change.

Anak

I think a lot of the funds went to Bruno and what he was doing and we do know of one guy here who was helped in the last month.
Also one other thing is not as much was available to bid for as in the past.

[geek2me]

Also that the Gift must be sent.  It seems since I have been doing this every year there is someone who does not send out their gift to someone.

That is unfortunate and disappointing.  How do you track that?  People report they did not receive their gift?  If a package is lost in shipping and people don't post a "thank you" how would the sender know the gift was not received?

I think I forgot to post a "thank you", but I did receive a very nice gift.  Thanks to my Secret Santa!

[Arlin Eastman]

It would be nice to see some pictures of what you got and let others o and ahh.

[doobes]

Chris, I just want to say thanks to you and Cloudy for making Secret Santa happen.  I think the start time is just fine--if you're going to send a gift, a 1-month lead time should be plenty.  For my part, more time would just give me longer to procrastinate.  

I have one or two suggestions, but I'll be sending those via PM.

Thanks Steve,

I got your PM and replied.

As I develop my thoughts about taking the process into the future, I will post my postulation from time to time, as I feel this needs to be a group process. All will get their opportunity to weigh in and make this a more robust and rewarding operation.

A summary document is definitely needed to define the process for the lucky cuss that follows me.  I felt a bit lost at first and there was some definite too-ing and fro-ing between myself and High-Pi.  Not his fault, it's just what he had to work with. 

Don't fret though, I'll be doing this for a while. At the end of the day, I enjoyed the process and it was not overly time consuming. I might even participate in the giving next year


I'm something of a geek though, and feel some refinement and further automation of the process is in order.  We'll talk about that in the upcoming months.

Thanks again to all who participated and posted feedback.  And yes, I would be remiss without thanking my faithful elves, Cloudy and Arlin for all the support they provided to the process.

cheers,