

Show HN: Conspiracy Santa: A Better Secret Santa for Teams - bryanh
http://conspiracysanta.com/

======
bryanh
We open sourced the little app (Bottle.py and React.js) that powers this tool:
[https://github.com/zapier/conspiracysanta.com](https://github.com/zapier/conspiracysanta.com)

We also wrote an accompanying blog post about it:
[https://zapier.com/blog/conspiracy-
santa/](https://zapier.com/blog/conspiracy-santa/)

It worked amazingly for our team last year. We are definitely doing it again
and I think everyone is really looking forward to it.

We considered doing a full on, invite-the-whole-team SaaS like app but email
seemed like the easiest way to implement this. It worked well for us last
year, but might break with more members. We'll see!

~~~
mankyd
Very cool idea!

Maybe make it so that teams of people get assigned to giftees, but maybe not
_everyone_? So that, if I want to play with 12 friends, there aren't 12
separate email threads I need to track. Instead, give me 4 (or an adjustable)
number of giftees.

~~~
bryanh
Cool idea! That might make it way more manageable for large groups.

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JshWright
Bah... this hit HN a week too late...

Our extended family decided to use this exact model this year, and managing
the email lists was indeed a major pain in the neck.

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bengali3
Great idea for friends! For my co-workers on the other hand... i'd hesitate to
offer an O(n²) solution. I do believe the Feels per Participant™ ratio would
be optimal for the group. However this ratio means little to aforementioned
participant sample.

Thanks for sharing!

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ChuckMcM
Nice. It is definitely a good variation. One that I don't like is the everyone
randomly picks a gift from a table of 'equivalent' gifts, and has the option
of either opening it or handing it to someone who has already opened their
gift and taking the gift they had. Basically swapping them an unopened gift
for a known gift. Known gifts could only be 'stolen' 3 times before the the
were immune from being taken.

~~~
jameshart
I was introduced to that format once I moved to Massachusetts as the 'Yankee
Swap'. It's fun so long as nobody takes it remotely seriously. I think it
appeals to the New Englanders' intrinsic love of the possibility of screwing
over their friends.

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dugmartin
You might want to resize the original Santa image on your server - 586K for a
small image in the corner is a little large.

[http://conspiracysanta.com/img/santa.png](http://conspiracysanta.com/img/santa.png)

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Robadob
Without signing up for it to test, it's unclear whether each email thread is
assigned a different 'host' so that in the end every person handles the actual
purchase/ordering of 1 other persons gift (much like secret santa).

~~~
bryanh
It isn't specified in our version since a founder buys all the gifts, but you
could just say in the thread "who wants to order it?" or come up with a more
specific method.

~~~
Robadob
Without the system automatically assigning buyers, I'd expect it's very
possible oversight would allow for the final gift to not have anyone in on the
conspiracy having already bought a gift.

Being on GitHub it shouldn't be too hard to fork it/submit a pull request to
make it an optional feature I guess. Will see If I can find the time.

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seeingfurther
Wouldn't it be easier to setup individual rooms for each employee within Slack
and then just lock that employee out of the room deciding his gift?

~~~
bryanh
That could also work too!

