Squishy Cows on Parade

(This article also appears on Tucows Farm.)

Let’s consider Tucows’ most prized swag: the venerable squishy cow:

The squishy cows I took to Railsconf.

Although t-shirts, baseball caps, stickers and USB keys with the Tucows logo are nice, our most asked-for piece of swag remains the foam rubber squishy cow. In my nearly 3 years here (it’ll be exactly three years this Friday), I’ve given away more of these creatures than I can recall — the number should be in the hundreds. I believe I last gave one away to Damian Conway just before his Fun with Dead Languages presentation last week.

The squishy cows I took to Railsconf, taken from a slightly different angle.

One idea we’ve been bouncing about the office is to try and get squishy cows photographed in interesting places or with interesting scenery as a backdrop, not just in our head office city of Toronto or in Starkville, where our other office is located, but all over the world. One of my standing orders is to make sure I get squishy cow photos with interesting scenery whenever I’m travelling on business, whether it’s for a meeting or attending a conference.

While I do manage to travel quite a bit, there are more scenic spots for squishy cow photos than I could ever hope to travel to. However, a squishy cow is a pretty small and light thing, and it travels far more easily than a Technical Community Development Coordinator could ever hope to. And that’s where you come in.

“I can see my pasture from here!” Taken on the flight to RailsConf.

If you’d like to have a squishy cow of your very own, I have a proposition for you: send me your mailing address and I’ll send you a squishy cow. All that I ask in return is that you:

• Take a photo of the squishy cow, preferably in an interesting place where you live, work or play.
• Either post it online — on your personal page, blog or photo-sharing site like Flickr or BubbleShare — or send me a copy of the photo to post online.
• If you posted the photo online yourself, send me a link to your photo.
• If you posted the photo to a site that supports tags, such as a blog or Flickr, give it the tag squishycow.

That’s all there is to it. If you want a cow, email me with your mailing address and get ready to post some photos!