is something like that available? not only is “iNat hat” fun to say, i think it would be interesting to see people out and about sporting them – a conversation starter.
UPDATE: there have been a lot of suggestions for different kinds of merch. so even though the iNat staff didn’t ask for one, i’m adding a survey here for that based on some of the items suggested so far. (let me know if i need to add anything here.) choose only the items you would actually fork over cash to buy.
The short answer is not yet, we’re working on it. We originally hoped to have iNaturalist shirts (at least) for sale by December 2018, but it caught some bureaucratic snags. We’re now aiming for late this year as a new target.
Some of those cheap little plastic 6 inch rulers with the iNat logo would be awesome for taking pictures of fiddly things on the ground. I’d get our local nature area to buy a gross just to hand them out to people at events.
A hat would be sick. Even just patches so I could make my own iNat gear would be awesome.
I have an unofficial iNat tshirt that I got from @sambiology last year at the Texas meetup. One day last summer I was randomly wearing that shirt as I was eating lunch at McDonalds when a couple of dudes approached me, asking “is that an iNaturalist shirt?” The guys were familiar with the app but not regular users; I ended up finishing lunch with these guys and invited them to come blacklighting with me later that evening, which they were more than happy to. Spent the night photographing some cool bugs and geeking out over naturey things. All this is to say, official iNat merch sounds like a great idea to me a good way to meet like-minded people.
Bumper stickers that could double as a warning seems appropriate. You could do themes of them. iNaturalist | Warning: I brake for roadkill/birds/bugs/ponds that might have microbes in them
Regular baseball hat in a few different colors with the logo and name at the front would be great. People could not talk to you without seeing it. Then when they asked what you are doing, you could point to your hat.
Rather than a plain ruler or something with a color chart, how about a durable wallet-sized scale card with a color balance patch, along the lines of this? http://smallpond.ca/jim/scale/
I’d buy one. Having a bunch of these out in the world could really improve the data quality of many of the observations collected.
That’s a great idea–I can’t tell you how many times people have asked me if I’ve lost something, and one very nice person told me not to be afraid, but be warned–there were snakes along the creek. (I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was looking for those snakes.) I always wear a baseball cap, so I’d love different colors.
Well, I read that too quickly at first and definitely read “underwater” as a separate suggestion for iNat underwear. Oops.
Anyway, I also have one of Sam’s iNat shirts, and the local Tri-Beta (biology honor society) definitely had a geek-out moment over it. So I can certainly imagine that some merch would do great things (and, of course, help iNatters to recognize each other in the wild). Scales are also a great idea as those are almost always great tools and are easy to distribute.
I would love some merchandise. Probably hats would be at the top of my list, as we have a short window for wearing t-shirts without some type of jacket. all the other suggestions are good too.
BTW, what is a USB microscope?
A digital microscope that plugs into your usb port on the computer. Some you can attach to tablets etc and use them in the field too! A google search on “usb microscope” will show you the different types
