Last night Mama Wordbones and I attended the 26th Annual Taste and Auction of Howard County. The event features a smorgasbord from twenty five HoCo restaurants along with live and silent auctions. This year, the auctions had a new twist. Each attendee was provided an iPod to bid with. Instead of the paper tallies that usually accompany silent auction items, each item had a code. All you had to do was punch the code into your personalized iPod and bid away. As soon as someone outbid you, you received a notice on the iPod.
This new twist received mix reactions. Some liked it, others not so much. Vic Broccolino told me his wife Tina liked it but he didn’t. “I can’t see how much she’s spending,” he said.
We thought it was pretty cool. The technology means that you don’t have to keep running back to the item tables to see where you stand. I’m thinking that this leads to more robust bidding too. Unfortunately, I was outbid on every item I went after, including this photo donated by HoCo blogger David Hobby. The framed and signed print was over six hundred bucks when I dropped out.
I was told that this is the largest fundraiser for Gilchrest Hospice and may be one of the largest single night fundraisers in HoCo. It was also a lot of fun and the food was exceptional.
