My employer paid for the conference ticket, flight, and hotel to attend GopherCon in Denver this year. Not everyone is so fortunate.
The tech industry is predominately composed of white males. We would like this to change. We would like to see more diversity of people, ideas, and values.
To that end, GopherCon has long had a diversity fund that provides scholarships to pay for the conference, flight, and hotel for women, gender minorities, people of colour, and others working in technology who would like to attend GopherCon but are unable to afford it.
In addition to direct donations, GopherCon recently opened a shop at the conference, where attendees can buy extra swag. Every dollar spent at the shop goes to the diversity fund.
The contract with our publisher states that authors receive 25 copies of the print edition. A few months ago I had this crazy idea of donating 25 copies to the GopherCon Diversity Fund Shop. The only problem was that the book wasn't quite done yet. After many long nights and weekends, we were able to send a special print-on-demand order to the conference organizers.
The book was up on display at the shop on Monday, the workshop day before the conference. They sold 16 copies for $35 each on Monday. I arrived in Denver that evening after the shop was closed. Early on Tuesday morning I went down to the shop and was able to see our book in print for the very first time! The printer had actually sent 28 copies, so I kept one for myself to show people.
Erick Zelaya illustrated the later lessons of the book. He was attending the conference with his wife Jamilet, who is a web developer. I gave them a signed copy of the book as well.
Ten copies of the book remained, so I gave the shop ten sticker sheets to give anyone who bought the book on Tuesday. When I returned later that day, they had the stickers up on display, and they said many people were asking for the stickers.
So I donated some Get Programming with Go stickers, which they sold under the same skew as the GopherCon sticker packs for $5 each.
The print book sold out on Tuesday. The publisher provided 10 free eBook codes, which we printed off and gave out to anyone who came asking for the book after it sold out.
Altogether we raised $1580 for the Diversity Fund. The book brought in $910 and the stickers garnered $670. The later is an estimate based providing 150 sticker sheets and receiving 16 back at the end of the conference.
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