Re: Prizes & Publicity

["Jennifer Glover" <jglover@autometric.com>]

I think I must chime in with a vote for continuing with the idea of
having real prizes.  If a company is willing to shell out the money to
give away merchandise, odds are they will pay to have it shipped to
the winner.  Whoever talks to any company that offers merchandise will
have to make sure that it is clear whether the company or the contest
will be paying for the shipping and that the company is aware that
someone in China may win, or Peru, or anywhere.  Any aquariums in
Antarctica?  Now that would be some expensive shipping!  How expensive
is an air drop to deliver an Eheim filter? :)  At the time of contest
final results, we can look at the list of prizes and categories and
figure out how things fall.  I don't think it would be wise to worry
about the quantity of either, because we won't know until the end of
the contest the numbers of either.

As for gathering contact info, I am willing to try and cover the
Maryland, Virginia, and Washington DC area.  I did some web crawling
awhile ago and stumbled on some sites that were collections of
regional groups.  If I can find it again, that might be a good way of
finding regional groups away from where we all are.  

For publicity, I say that we don't contact anyone until we have a
working web site and consolidated info.  I am sure that people will
have questions and we want to look professional.  To prevent multiple
contactings and spamming, should we have a center site that we all add
our contacts to and then we will divvy them up when it comes time to
announce the contest?  If there is one group list and a checkmark of
whether they have been contacted or not, then we won't have the
problem of multiple people spamming a company/organization.

Now we are starting to get to a point when I know something and can
contribute!  I really like the thought that is going into this contest
and I feel really privileged to be a part of the organization of this
contest.  There are some really talented and intelligent people on
this list and it is a privilege to get to rub virtual elbows with you.

Jenn  
(dragging herself back to work and ignoring the temptation to web surf
at work)
-- 
Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying
himself a pleasure.  --Ambrose Bierce
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