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Have you considered authorising a company somewhere to produce real-world badges for stackoverflow accounts?

Obviously this is trivial, but I'm sure a few people (myself included) would enjoy being able to bring our... flair... into the real world.

The benefits are both ways; it advertises SO in the real world (at meetups, conventions, any kind of technical gathering), and allows people to show-off their status, which is, of course, one of the defining traits of geekdom.

Edit: Could we have stackoverflow at cafepress, or somesuch? So at the very least we can get stackoverflow branded stuff? Is the artwork available as vector anywhere?

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Do you own a company that makes badges, or something? –  Tom Jul 15 '09 at 3:39
I can't wait to be seen with my woot! and Necromancer badges :) –  Andrew Hare Jul 15 '09 at 3:43
I can't say I do, although I wouldn't mind if I did. I just know that one day, I'll earn a gold badge, and then I'll want to literally wear it everywhere I go; quite possibly for the rest of my life. :D –  Dave Gamble Jul 15 '09 at 3:45

2 Answers 2

up vote 3 down vote accepted

I think the best way to implement something like this would be to create Stack Overflow, Server Fault, and Super User lapel pins. This would accomplish recognizing other users of your favorite site/s. Then you could have business-like cards


picture of stackoverflow example card

something along the lines of this although more polished

*Edit:*My image for the back of the card is to have the tags arranged in a tag cloud sort of visual but too much work to mock up right now

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What happens when the user has like 500 tags then? –  RCIX Jul 15 '09 at 6:03
Jon Skeet's card would be physically impossible... –  Ivo Flipse Jul 15 '09 at 6:16
@RCIX - if x is the number of tags that fits comfortably on a card then take the top x out of the 500 –  soldier.moth Jul 15 '09 at 6:23
@Ivo - his tags would work by my previous comment, for the badges there is already hierarchy in place in gold, silver, and bronze so you would start with gold, then silver, then bronze until you run out of room. The point of the card is showing off so if you have enough gold and silver, then do you really need to show off your bronze badges –  soldier.moth Jul 15 '09 at 6:29

Another option I can think of would be for each site to sell high quality sticker and/or patch exact representations of the badges for decorating laptops, monitor borders, etc (stickers) and laptop bags, jackets, shirts, ties, etc.(patches).

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