Re: [lp-ca-on] Giving Guide Giveaway

[Sergio Durigan Junior]

On Thursday, November 20 2014, Blaise Alleyne wrote:

> Dundas Square has some advantages and disadvantages.
>
> It's one of the busiest intersections in the city for sure, but *lots* of 
> people
> hand stuff out (from activist groups to megaphone street preachers to 
> corporate
> promotions), so many people get a bit resistant to it... sometimes, it feels
> like you could be handing out $100 bills and people would still refuse.

Heh, yeah, this is something I was not considering.  Thanks for bringing
this to the table.

> BUT... since the giving guide does have a focus on shopping, the Eaton Centre,
> which is at Yonge/Dundas, wouldn't be a bad target as (one of?) the biggest 
> mall(s).

Eaton Centre is definitely a good place to do this.  Maybe even more
than Dundas Square (and it has the advantage that it's not cold inside
Eaton!).

> Yorkdale would be the other big mall, and there's an Apple store, a Microsoft
> store, and probably several other tech stores there (e.g. I'm sure there are
> Robelus stores... I remember at least TELUS, maybe Rogers... kiosks for Fido,
> Koodo...).

You know what, I thought about Yorkdale too.  I think I told you about
my "experience" when I went there and saw the huge line in front of the
Apple store...

> Is this something that we could easily do to hand out flyers from inside a 
> mall,
> or would it be better to stay on public sidewalks where we don't have to worry
> about getting kicked off private property? Eaton Centre wins over Yorkdale in
> terms of having public sidewalks right outside, whereas people don't really 
> walk
> into Yorkdale.

I was not considering that we could be kicked off, too...  Maybe I'm to
naïve, but my first thought was "we will be doing anything wrong, so
there is no reason to worry".

> The other option would be to just target particular stores, like a popular 
> Best
> Buy or Future Shop? Though, I feel like it's a bit late for people who are 
> about
> to walk into a store and about to buy something... unless we're aware of more
> freedom friendly options that are inside that same store towards which we 
> could
> redirect people?
>
> (I'm skeptical of that, and my general feeling inside a Best Buy is usually:
> https://xkcd.com/272/ )

Haha :-).

Yeah, you are right.  To be completely honest with you, I also think
that last year's giving guide from FSF had a few "issues":

<https://www.fsf.org/givingguide/2013>

For example, they recommend you to give a FSF membership card instead of
a $50 iTunes card...  This is not as much "quid-pro-quo" as one would
expect.  So if we show up with this kind of advice, some will laugh at
our faces, I'm afraid.

OTOH, and even though I am also a bit skeptical about targeting Best
Buy's wannabe customers, I still think this could be a good thing to
do.  Of course most people won't pay attention to what we say, but maybe
the person has not made his/her mind yet, and we could be responsible
for it.

Anyway, before discussing all of this: do you think it's easy/cheap to
print 50 units of this guide here in Toronto?

Cheers,

-- 
Sergio
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