SparkFun Free Day returns

Last year, SparkFun held a free day where they gave away $100,000 in merch to anyone who could refresh their browser fast enough. This time they’re upping the ante with $150K in swag:

On January 13th, 2011, Boulder-based SparkFun Electronics will give away $150,000 worth of products in the second annual iteration of the aptly-named event “Free Day.” The event is open to anyone with the magic powers of the internet. Free Day is designed to celebrate current SparkFun customers while giving those unfamiliar with SparkFun an easy foray into the wonderful world of DIY electronics. To learn more about or participate in Free Day please visit http://www.sparkfun.com.

“Free Day is our way of giving back to our loyal customer base of innovative and passionate electronics enthusiasts, and to offer first-time folks an opportunity to get started designing and building fun electronic gadgets,” said SparkFun Founder and CEO Nathan Seidle. “We love helping people turn designs ideas into reality and we look forward to seeing what our community members come up with as a result of this event.”

In its seventh year of business, SparkFun hosted its first Free Day event, successfully giving away $100k worth of goods on a first-come, first-served basis. In the second Free Day, the stakes are raised with $150k (a max of $100 per person) up for grabs as users are rewarded either based on the number of years they have been SparkFun customers or their answers to an electronics-themed quiz. In addition to the prize funds, SparkFun will donate $2 for each correctly answered question (up to a total of $30,000) to a collection of three charities: The Gathering Place, The Hunger Project, and X Prize Foundation.

Good luck!

2 Responses to SparkFun Free Day returns

RocketGuy on January 13th, 2011 at 10:01 am said:

Or, in my case, now end.

Looks like the site entirely tanked at 9:58. I was on my third question. So sad.

But hey, it’s free stuff! So while I hate the world wide wait(ARGGH!), I have nobody but myself to blame for participating.

It’s awfully nice of SparkFun to be doing this at all, so let’s not give them any grief, shall we?

-RG

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AnubisTTP on January 13th, 2011 at 6:37 pm said:

Free Day was approximately 500% better organized this year, the combination of loyalty points and an electronics test means that most of the free foldin-money probably went to people who are actually going to build something out of their Free Day swag instead of hawking it on Ebay. I just took $30 dollars loyalty cash instead of trying to DDOS my way through the test, but managed to get through to the site after only about 15 minutes of page reloading.

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