AUTHOR | Sara Loretta
PUBLISHED | Nov 2026
There is no better feeling than giving attendees swag that, when they get home they display it in their office & text you pictures. And, it’s exactly what happened after Ops Ahoy 2026.
For awhile now, I’d had this idea of giving attendees something to do while they drank coffee before programming began. Not scrolling, not forced networking, but something quiet if they needed to wake up a bit before diving head first into the event’s content.
I thought about myself, how every morning I sit with my coffee and work on the current puzzle spread out in my office. Of course we don’t have room for a jigsaw puzzle (or the manpower to make sure pieces don’t get lost), but what could attendees do sitting at their seat? I thought about crosswords and horoscopes; then it hit me: a limited-edition newspaper designed specificially for the event they were at.
And of course the little aliens listening through my devices heard me, and not too long after I got an ad for a company called Newspaper Club.
Newspaper Club prints zines, broadsheets and other newspaper products from Scotland (which INSANE coincidence, in the same city where the Moshulu was built — the ship we held Ops Ahoy at). If you’re thinking about creating your own newspaper, NC offers a free sample pack, and upon receiving it, I was so impressed, that I decided to move forward on designing the Ops Ahoy Gazette.
Inside there are articles about operations; a custom crossword, where all the answers have to do with ops and Philadelphia; late-night suggestions for bars and ice cream shops; and my personal proud moment, classified ads for speakers and sponsors, and silly ones I made up to fit the theme of the event.
Most importantly, on the inside is a manifest of every single attendee, which doubles as a networking opportunity to see who is onsite and of course, we encouraged every attendee to write notes in the paper margins from conversations.
The real magic though, came when we announced the paper itself. I asked Joe (speaker and friend) to dress up as a Paper Boy, ring a bell and yell “EXTRA! EXTRA! The Ops Ahoy Gazette is here!”.
It was the funniest, greatest surprise moment of any event I’ve ever produced… check it out for yourself.
The Ops Ahoy Gazette is a great example of ways you can have unforgettable moments at your own event. Getting the paper printed through Newspaper Club wasn’t a large investment (90 copies for $262 with shipping), and added another layer of care to a traditionally less-cared about time on the agenda.
And I’m really freakin’ proud of how it turned out.
I posted a deep dive of designing the paper with Canva and Gemini + showing you each section of the final product, and working with Newspaper Club over on my Youtube channel (watch below).
