I also think it would have been interesting if they had done it with little to no advance warning. I first read about it when they first announced it, and marked my calendar. This gave all the deal sites, and people who want anything, as long as it’s free, plenty of time to get ready. Maybe next time they should just spring it on us, in a venue or medium where we electronics nerds will be the first to pick up on it, and take advantage of it. An IRC channel? Encoded in a page of Make? Hmm.

I’m interested to know the final impact as well. The thing that gets me about it is, SparkFun doesn’t really sell things that are of interest to the common person. Most people won’t ever need a capacitor. The positive side of people becoming aware of SFE, is that people who weren’t interested in electronics before might very well become so just out of exposure to the site. One of the big breakthroughs to my interest in hobby electronics was realizing that most companies that make devices get their components from common manufacturers. I opened up an old BlackBerry and found a the mainboard contained a dozen chips that I can easily find a datasheet for. Desolder the chip and I’ve got something to use. In this case I’ve got both a USB connector, and a USB IC that does all the work!

Free Day initially came out to places where nerds do frequent, but with so much lead time that it ended up every where else too. I think a heavy discount on the-day-of would be the best. Either that or a unique puzzle for each purchaser. I don’t know how they’d generate them or distribute them fairly, but it would certainly weed out a lot of freeloaders. (I guess on Free day, we’re all kind of freeloaders.)

As a side note for local people, you should check out Surplus Gizmos(http://www.surplusgizmos.com/) . They have a lot of cool stuff on their website, but what they don’t list there is the incredible amount of cool stuff in their store. They have ancient computers, leftover electronics, abandoned models from last year and last decade. Some of it no doubt is junk, but a lot of it has a second life in hobby projects. I highly recommend them.

I also think it would have been interesting if they had done it with little to no advance warning. I first read about it when they first announced it, and marked my calendar. This gave all the deal sites, and people who want anything, as long as it’s free, plenty of time to get ready. Maybe next time they should just spring it on us, in a venue or medium where we electronics nerds will be the first to pick up on it, and take advantage of it. An IRC channel? Encoded in a page of Make? Hmm.