A Sweet Tradition

Boardgamegeek has just run their SECRET SANTA PROGRAM for 2006 This was a great idea started by Tom "Dice Tower" Vasel last year for the first time. He suggested the idea that Boardgamegeek members send each other a "Secret Santa" present, much like people still do in offices and other organizations. This process is easily facilitated (at least for the folks in North America) by the large number of gaming distributors online that will ship directly to a second party, and the fact that BGG maintains an online "wishlist" (kind of like my froogle list behind the Xmas tree, on the left side column there). Last yaar was a roaring success (I don't know how many people signed up, but it was a lot). I didn't notice this in time last year, or I would have gladly participated. However, THIS year BGG formalized the concept far more than last year and even wrote some code making the whole process more streamlined.

Aldie posted the country list of the participants this year:

Here's the country list breakdown:
Norway - 1
Hungary - 1
Japan - 1
British Isles - 1
Hong Kong - 1
Slovenia - 1
Austria - 1
Taiwan - 1
Israel - 1
Mexico - 1
Malaysia - 1
New Zealand - 2
South Korea - 2
Italy - 2
Brazil - 3
Singapore - 3
France - 4
Belgium - 4
Portugal - 4
Chile - 5
Finland - 5
Denmark - 5
Sweden - 6
Netherlands - 7
England - 9
Spain - 9
Germany - 11
Australia - 14
United Kingdom - 29
Canada - 47
USA - 468

That's a whole lot of people... many of whom are (I'm guessing) unlikely to be celebrating Christmas.

I gladly participated as soon as I had the chance, and when I got my notification of a "target" living in Washington State, I had a gift on its way to her in point blimfark (guess this internet is good for something). I did identify myself, even though remaining anonymous sounds like it would earn me more karma. I don't need the gratitiude, but it would be nice to know if the package made it or not..