On February 12, 2007, the YearlyKos Convention organizers will be launching their first charity Yearlykos 2007 Convention Auction in support of the convention extravanganza scheduled for August 2 -- 5, 2007 in Chicago. The auction will run through February 19, with all auction items going to the highest bidder, and all proceeds from the auction going to fund the YearlyKos convention.
Last year's auctions, organized by the YearlyKos team and long time Kossack Hyperbolic Pants Explosion, were a great success, featuring items such as:
- An Autographed & Illustrated Scotty Show Transcript
- Rare Keith Olbermann Promo Tattoos
- Lunch with Armando
- A 1968 Democratic Donkey Jim Beam Decanter
- Autographed copies of 'Crashing the Gates'
- Original works of Art
- Daily Kos registration number '100,000'
And much much more.
This year, given the organization's higher profile, we expect to have MORE BETTER contributions donated for auctions. One premium item that you can expect:
The official Yearly Kos banner from the first annual YearlyKos convention at Las Vegas, with the signatures of all the YearlyKos organizers, as well as the signature of some guy named Markos Moulitsas.
But we still need more items from you. If you'd like to contribute an item, please go to this link, and then send an email using the category "auction." We'd also like to pass along our thanks to this year's Auction Team including the returning HPE, and joining us this year, Oortdust and Sandy on Signal.
We also want to remind people that the $100 registration rate for students and low-income Kossacks will expire on January 31. For those of you who are more affluent, we ask you not to register at this lower rate, but to at least register at the standard rate, or at a higher rate if you can afford to do so. The lower rate is meant for students and others who have financial challenges. Of course, there will no penalty to you for signing up at the lower rate, even if you are in good shape financially, or even if you are Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. We're working on the honor system here, and the honor system only, and we ask that you respect that.
Also, we are reviewing our fundraising numbers to date, as well as our budget, and, depending on the results of that review, we may be forced to raise the standard $175 registration rate on January 31 as well. As you know, putting on a convention of this scale is quite costly. If we were to fund the convention entirely through registration fees, without doing any fundraising, we would have to charge each convention registrant $600.
However, because we remain committed to setting registration fees at a level that allows as many Kossacks to attend as possible, we have engaged in extensive fundraising, both here on the site and elsewhere. The more funds we can raise, whether we raise them through donations or through the auction, the lower we can keep the registration fees. Accordingly, if you share our goal of opening the convention to as many people as possible, and if you have the means to donate towards that goal, we ask that you send us a financial donation (you can do so at this link here), or that you donate an item to the auction.
You should also know that the YearlyKos organizers are quietly putting together an extraordinary Convention agenda. Sign up for the mailing list and keep your eyes on the YYC website. You should expect some major announcements shortly. You can keep up to date on news about the convention with our new RSS feed. Click here to subscribe.
One other note, if you are interested in becoming a sponsor of the 2007 YearlyKos Convention, and join our growing list of sponsors including the NEA, VoteVets, The Huffington Post, 2Checkout.com, Progressive States Network and Advomatic, please visit our sponsor page on our website. We also have many opportunities available in our Exhibit Hall. To get information about having a booth or tabletop in this area at the Convention, please, contact us.
And finally, one more bit of news -- if you'd like to read what bloggers and dailykos diarists have been saying about the Convention, the YKC website now has a page aggregating YearlyKos blogposts and diaries from DailyKos and around the web. The link for this is here. It's good place for to do "one stop shopping" for all the latest kibbitzing on the Convention.
And with that, the disembodied YearlyKos spokesperson bids adieu. See you in Chicago!