Keynote starts at 9am PT, noon ET. If you haven't registered and want to attend, you can do that here.
This year's Expo booths shown below. Different product teams participate each year (and different sponsors). If you have questions or feedback for eBay on any of the following topics, you can ask them on the Q&A tab for that booth, or use the chat tab while a booth is live.
Hey @pjcdn2005 @sin-n-dex @marnotom! - there's an eBay Canada booth this year. That's new. Nice to see our neighbors to the north getting some recognition.
Edit: never mind. There was an eBay Canada booth last year, too - so that's not new. It's early and my brain's not at full function yet. 😂
@wastingtime101 wrote:Yeah, those live events are more networking sessions than anything else and there are generally a few eBay employees so you can ask questions or give feedback.
All righty now, a summary of last night's event:
The eBay Open 2024 Kickoff Party meetup is now in our rear view mirror, literally, as it involved a drive from (in our case) the northwest suburbs of Chicago up to Delavan, Wisconsin. There was me and two other sellers in our van, and our destination was Delavan Lanes, which on Google StreetView looked like a local bowling alley. I was envisioning some kind of bare-brick, exposed oak beams type of place with assorted craft beers on tap and a lot of man-bun hairstyles, but it was, in fact, a local bowling alley.
We were cheerfully greeted by a number of local ladies running the event, though I don't recall meeting anyone officially from eBay. There were official eBay decorations put up and a couple of monitors set up to play eBay sponsor ads and a couple of short intros to the events of today and tomorrow. They had three long tables set up just past the bar (also staffed by the owner, an eBay seller), and that turned out to be more than enough seating; I would estimate we had about 20 people in attendance.
There was a ton of food. Not just little croissants with meat or cheese, but also hot dishes, sloppy joe mix, a pot of cocktail wieners, some truly massive deli sandwiches, and an official eBay cake for dessert.
We started out by watching a short video of ads by the sponsors, and the intro, and then it was back to our host. We were all issued ink daubers and Bingo cards with an eBay subject or activity in each square, and instructed to interact and network to get our cards daubed by other sellers based on their qualifications (e.g. Uses Promoted Listings, Ships Internationally, Has Attended Past Events, etc.). Anyone who asked me would have hit the mother lode of qualifications, but I tried to rein myself in and just mark a few on each.
Probably the most interesting part was the unscripted dialogue that followed. Our host invited us to go round each table, one at a time, to introduce ourselves to the rest of the group, explain what we sold and so on. Given that our headcount was only about 20, this went well and some interesting questions were asked. Some were more chatty than others and some were very helpful in relating their experiences, though one, perhaps a little nervous, brought the house down with her own introduction, which went something like, "Hi, my name is Monique, and I am an eBay seller. [pause] I'm sorry, this sounds like Alcoholics Anonymous..." 😄
It was not a long evening... they finished with a raffle (one of our party won a $50 eBay gift card) and a group photo, which was padded out a bit by bringing in a large stand-up cardboard cutout figure from the bar to fill in the back row, so if you see a collection of Kickoff Party group photos on-line anywhere, that's me standing next to Elvis.
We heard that eBay had told them to expect about 26, then that estimate ballooned to 59, but in the end we sellers were outnumbered by all the swag and sandwiches. The local bowlers coming in later that evening must have had a feast.
So, on to the swag. The biggest, nicest item was definitely the swag bag itself, a big, white, heavy-duty canvas bag with zippered closure and extra side pocket. As I set up the photo below, I started looking at each item out of curiosity to see where it was made, and this bag was rather proudly made in Lahore, Pakistan, coming to us through what appeared to be one of multiple promotion companies all stamping the eBay logo (except for the bag, which was nicely embroidered). There were so many knickknacks included (some in assorted colors) that I noticed a checklist had been filled out during prep, so that we would all get our share.
From left to right:
- A "Seller Ledger" denim bag with zipper and leather drawstring pull, looking much like a money bag for a garage sale (India)
- A green eBay hardbound notebook with matching pen in an elastic holder (China)
- A squishy blue "eBay International Shipping" guy for stress-relief squeezing as you wonder whether your shipment is ever going to make it out of Glendale Heights, IL and onto a plane at O'Hare (No Country of Origin specified)
- Orange plastic Ray-Ban style sunglasses (China)
- Small white "eBay Open 2024" button (unspecified)
- Small black "List it, ship it, love it" button (unspecified)
- Round blue "LIST PERFECTLY Ecommerce Solutions" (apparently a sponsor) locking tape measure (China)
- "THE WORLD IS YOUR ADDRESS by asendia" luggage tag (unspecified)
- Square-bottom black "eBay International Shipping" locking tape measure with belt clip (China)
(Incidentally, the next time eBay is choosing their swag selections, someone needs to produce a tape measure with the eBay logo actually on the tape measure markings, for those of us who need to show measurements in listing photos.) - A somewhat puzzling "eBay advertising" sticker which was advertising, well, eBay advertising
- ...and a truly massive black aluminum travel cup with lid and straw. I was able to use one of my two official tape measures to determine that the straw alone was over a foot long. Non-microwaveable and hand wash only (if I can reach the bottom of it); no country of origin
So clearly a lot of money has been poured into this event, and to be honest I was expecting a lot more people, given that this was the closest site to Chicago, but perhaps the where-the-heck-is-Delavan-Wisconsin location deterred folks from attending. That's too bad; it's a nice place and not hard to reach. Better luck next year. In the meantime, have some leftover cake; it was delicious!
@chapeau-noir wrote:Thank you @a_c_green ! An excellent precis! kudos for spelling "mother lode" correctly. Also the cocktail wieners.
I will cheerfully admit that I first typed that as "weiners," but then thought "No, that doesn't look right." I think I have a pretty good eye for spelling; my bigger problem is that my brain gets ahead of my fingers, and I'm typing so fast that I leave out entire.
Space in my previous post was getting a bit tight, what with two photos already stuffed in there, so here is the Bingo card, if anyone wants to play:
