Sunday, December 24, 2006

Contest Results

OK,

I've been thinking quite a bit about how to make the call about both contests, its been really hard on both fronts.

T-Shirt Contest

In the end the tally came to (for the top 3):


5 27 37
1 5 10 5
2 6 3 1
3 3 4 1
Total Votes 14 17 7
Wighted Votes 30 40 18


First of all, I like all 3 of the top voted designs, but as previously expressed I really like #5, but I also think #27 and also #37 are very good. I've been stewing about how to deal with the situation since #27 did get more votes than #5 in terms of votes. Also, as we know, #27 and #37 have some issues in terms of trademark, that have to be addressed - Tony (#27) has provided some updated designs, which I like, but that absolutely noone has given any feedback on.

Like I said, this has been very difficult and I hope that everyone who voted, understands the difficulty - I've decided to give the prize to BOTH top entries - VL for #5, and Tony for #27. Congratulations to both of you - and thank you for your great designs!

I would like to give Beau's #37 what amounts to an honorable mention for his design. Also, should the trademark issue get addressed, and at least a few people express an interest, I will have #37 offered as well.

Beau if you would provide a similar modification ("revizon" I think would work well in your case too), and we can get some feedback on it, it would be great to offer all 3 designs as T-Shirts (as long as my T-Shirt maker will do that for us).

Also, in light of the dwindling interest in this blog :(, I'd like to set the price for the shirts as low as possible so that people might be more likely to buy them. I haven't gotten any feedback on this at all, so I'm making the call that seems to make the most sense. I don't think we would have raised much money for charity. Perhaps the visibility this issue has raised in terms of math education, has done some good in its own right.


Remix Contest

In this case the votes still stand at 0 to 0 - not a single vote. I assume this is again due to the dwindling interest and the holidays. That said, I think I have a solution that will work.

I think both submissions are great, and obviously took a lot of time and effort. Therefore I am again going to award BOTH entries the prize!

Congratulations Davman and Beau!

Coincidentally, today my total ad revenue stands at $289.57 - which is a mere $2.41 higher than 4 x $71.79 (I find that pretty funny). So all 4 of you will be receiving the full prize! (please contact me with your preferred payment method - physical address for a check or paypal email).

Thank you everyone for participating! I will try to get the 2 T-Shirt designs into the hands of the printers ASAP. The earliest I will have news about this is probably Tuesday because of the holiday. I will post the info as soon as I have it.

I wish you all a very Happy Holiday!

13 comments:

D1mitri said...

Nice of you to award so many people at once.
I kinda missed the vote for remix contest.. But I'm looking forward to when T-Shirts come out!

Joel said...

I rather like the idea of being able to say, "I paid attention to VerizonMath and all I got was this clever t-shirt."

Way to turn this into a postive g.

George Vaccaro said...

@dmitri

Thanks for the comment! I thought it worked out quite nicely that way. Check back Tuesday or Wednesday and I should have the link posted for the T-Shirts.

@joel

Pretty funny, I didn't think about it that way. Kind of a virtual tourist T-Shirt :).

Thanks for the comments.

Jeremy said...

George -- for some of the designs that didn't win (like mine), maybe you could have a free wallpaper download? I would be happy to create a more colorful version of my designs. That might give you some more exposure, too!

Anonymous said...

Yeah, wallpaper would be really cool!

Anonymous said...

I'd buy a t-shirt! (005)

George Vaccaro said...

@jeremy - great idea. Feel free to email me with yours and I will post it.

Anyone else who would like to submit theirs, please do.

Carlos said...

I stumbled on your blog a little late, but am astounded by this. The idiocy and subhuman intelligence that thrives in the world of cellular telephone customer service is nothing short of extraordinary.

I've worked in information systems and telecommunications for years and swear there's a big hospital somewhere where cellular carrier customer service reps go before they're hired to have 3/4 of their 16 brain cells removed as their indoctrination.

David said...

No offense George, but you've totally dropped the ball on this. Verizon still hasn't fixed the problem, and you haven't gone to the media, instead focusing on t-shirt contests?

George Vaccaro said...

@DavidSJ

None taken.

There is only so much that one person can do, and I did do quite a bit - I do have a life outside of trying to get Verizon to fix their obvious problems. Also, there are others pushing this further, but I'm not sure what kind of success they are having. Hopefully I will have updates soon.

Also, I suppose you could have done more too, no? I put a request out to have people make other recordings of Verizon in the act of misquoting and I only received one - from isaac.

Also, I wasn't swamped in media requests, and many of them died out after the refund - I thought that seemed weird considering my problem was just one instance of what seemed to be a systematic problem.

We'll see what the next week or so holds.

The T-Shirt contest seemed like something fun to do in the meantime.

Mark said...

I have to agree with David, George. You can't let Verizon get away with this, regardless of the refund.

I'd love a T-shirt as much as the next person who cares about basic math, but I'd prefer that Verizon was crucified for their stupidity. The latter will actually change something.

Jeremy said...

Happy New Year everyone!

Hey George, how about that wallpaper? :-)

Democrat Turned Republican said...

Exactly why outsourcing to India (where people know math) is not a bad idea.