Blogathon: Contest Rules
Category: Blogathon...
Posted Friday, July 28, 2006 at 04:01 PM [GMT-6]

We're a few hours away from the beginning of Blogathon, which kicks off bright and early at 8:00 a.m. (CDT) tomorrow. I've lost count of the number of people who have asked about the rules for the grand prize, which says more about my counting ability than about the interest in the contest. Nevertheless, I figured I'd share the rules in advance so you can decide whether it's anything you want to get wrapped up in.

But first, the carrot. The grand prize this year will be the winner's choice of either (1) a $25 gift certificate from iTunes or (b) your pick of any one item from the Fire Ant Gazette's extensive and tawdry CafePress Online Store. If you're unimpressed with the latter, then your standards are as high as I anticipated, and that's why I'm throwing in this twist: not only do you get to pick an item, but I will customize the graphic on that item to personalize it to your specification (within reason and within my limited graphic skills).

Now, the contest. If you checked in during Blogathon 2005, you surely learned your lesson, but we're going to do something similar. Each hour, beginning at 8:00 a.m., a new "Blogging from..." photo will be posted in the header of the Gazette's home page. Keep track of those photos. The winner will be the person who emails to me (info -at- ericsiegmund -dot- com) the most complete list of the locations shown in those photos -- in the same sequence they appeared on the website -- by 8:00 a.m. (CDT) on Monday, July 31. In the event that more than one person correctly identifies the same number of photos in the proper sequence, the winner will be the one whose email arrived first.

Oh, and this grand prize contest is open only to those who have made a Blogathon pledge via the Gazette. It's one of the ways I'd like to try to thank you for your support of Midland Fair Havens.

Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions about how this is supposed to work. It seems clear enough to me, but I'm taking allergy medication.