CD-ROM costs, mailing, etc

[Erik Olson <erik@thekrib.com>]

On Tue, 24 Aug 1999, James Purchase wrote:

> I have a feeling that Erik should be the one to suggest a "workable" upper
> limit, as he is the one who will be saddled with most of the scanning and
> web-work. I should think that the upper limit should also ensure that all
> images and other related materials will fit on ONE CD-ROM - it would be too
> much work to try to do more.
> 
> Erik, what do you think you can handle as a reasonable upper limit, given
> say a maximum of 5 images per entry? 100/200/500? I have no idea.

OK, let's say for average size 100K images (800x600 approx resolution), we
can fit 6000 images on a CD-R, which means 1000 entrants.

I would suggest that we cut our limit to 1/3 or half that... say 3-500
entries tops for practical scanning and judging limitations.  I will
probably start utilizing the other volunteers when the entries get over
100.

Related Question: Should we be capping the number of individual entries?
I can't remember if we've talked about it already, but is there a problem
if one guy enters 10 tanks?  That would certainly creep us up to our limit
more quickly.

> Also, you quoted a price of $1.20/disk earlier. I doubt that included the
> "jewel case" and a liner or sleeve. 

That's what I said was media costs for mailing to the JUDGES; I can
scrounge around enough jewel cases and mailers for that. For mailing to
everyone else, I will budget $10 per, including my time and expenses. Tack
on whatever extra you think should go to the AGA or the contest paying for
things.

> I have seen special mailers for these -
> but I don't know how the Canadian pricing would jive with what is available
> in the U.S. (usually, things are more expensive North of the border). The
> mailing cost of a cased CD-ROM would be nice to know as well, as would some
> idea of a projected end price, both to the Contest and to the consumer. One
> person had suggested $20.00, but that might be high.

Mailing with a jewel case is around $2.  I will find the price of padded
jewel case mailers next time I'm at Office Depot.  Some people just mail
them in cardboard things (AOL, for instance), but I've found the media
damaged in this case.

> Regarding "Certificates of Participation" and the cost and effort involved -
> well, I guess we'll just have to disagree on this one. It is my opinion
> that, especially if there is an "entrance fee", we should at least
> acknowledge their participation.

I think if there's an entrance fee, perhaps this is appropriate.  But if
there's no entrance fee, then I think not.

-- 
Erik Olson
erik at thekrib dot com

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