The link I shared goes to the SDCUE webpage as it looks now for our Fall 2010 event. Scroll down to see the original invitation to vendors, to click on our online form. You will also see a link to our vendor evaluation form and to the updates we wrote on the event. I was not the vendor chair, but these are my notes (I will add as I think of things!):
Successes to Share:
- It really helped to funnel the people thru the vendor area as they entered the event. We also had a mid-morning break where people could come to the vendor area and get Jamba Juices (that was a fundraiser for us) and see the exhibits. At lunch people returned to get their food. We also set up an eating area in the vendor area.
- As soon as a vendor indicated they wanted to pay via PayPal we had a "PayPal request for money" sent to them. As we got any payment we noted that on our internal communications page.
- I set up a special phone number so all faxes and voice messages came to this number as email attachments. I received the information on calls as an email attachment from the company, then forwarded to the correct committee member - and we set up a Google doc with a list of all calls so the committee members could make notes to show they had followed thru regarding the fax or voice message. This made it really easy to track POs and vendor communications and forms. The service is KALL8 and costs $2/month. There is an additional charge for each call, but I think the most we have ever paid was $4. We decided to keep the number all year round - access can easily be passed on to new committee member.
Things we need to work on:
- We need to make it clearer to vendors that we expected them to print out the online application form before they pressed to submit and to use that as their invoice (and to have someone set up to prepare invoices for vendors who needed them in another format).
- The Vendor chair is very busy with getting release forms, planning the area and setting up the vendor area. We are considering lightening his load and having a different person do the invoicing and financial bookkeeping.
Posted by June Dodge, San Diego Computer-Using Educators (SDCUE), Technology Conference 2010 Chair and SDCUE Communications. http://sdcue.org
