Blu wrote:Thanks all!
I am happy to report that I got my Meat Bike last week in Houston at an awesome store called Planetary Cycles. We were down in the Galveston area for an impromptu visit to the beach, and it just so happened that my bike was ready on our way back to Dallas. I am officially Bike #304 for Meat Fight!
This is awesome news! I'm glad things are moving along. Hope your treatment and support networks have all been as positive as this seems to be!
Blu wrote:I am still going through my gaming stuff, and plan to add more. I want to make it worth people's while. I am contemplating running the by my local retro gaming group on Facebook, but that would involve bringing in new members to the forum and that carries some implications as far as bidding goes (with regards to vetted, established forum members bidding). It's a double edged sword, it could bring in new, quality forum members, but runs the risk of creating some logistic issues in the event of conflict.
Well, there's several ways to do this. If those local folks want to donate stuff to bid on, they should send it to someone, possibly you?, as an escrow point of sorts. If they're on the forums they will see the bids, and if the bids are being sent to you, you can provide them with any proof of bidding and payment they need. As far as bidding goes, we could make sure bids must be sent prior to shipping items, and if you're collecting the payments you can confirm that with us. All shipped items should have valid tracking numbers (required), for example. And money isn't donated until items are received. There are ways to make this safe such that the role of trust is minimized, except for the requirement of a trusted crossover point, which would likely be you and thus put additional burden on you. That said, other aspects of the auction can be handled by the rest of us just fine. We've been through this before.
When to begin?
We should set an auction start date that's far enough out it gives people time to do what they need to do on their end. A concrete start date will ensure even procrastinators (whom I would know NOTHING about) will have some idea their wiggle room to prepare donations, particularly crafted donations. The start and end date should also align well with any deadlines you have for raising money and subsequently donating/distributing that money. So we should probably defer to you on that.
How long should the auction be held?
I think we should allow maybe 3 weeks. That way if people are on vacation or have big work projects and can only check in infrequently during a span of time they can still try to participate. It also gives us a little marketing window even after we go live.
Payment deadlines?
Payment should be tendered within 1 week of the close of the auction, unless special arrangements for exceptional circumstances have been made AND AGREED UPON in advance of the close of the auction.
Shared Spreadsheet with organizers for highest bids, payments received, and shipping addresses?
Yes, great idea. We can use forum messages to track bid history in case there's an issue and a bid needs to be rolled back.
Those are just my thoughts, however. I'm always open to better ideas.