Building Up To The 5 Day PUMA Manchester Giveaway
Posted on 24. May, 2008 by Chi-chi Ekweozor in Social Media Strategies, Trends
So this has been a rather frantic week with lots of developments behind the scenes as we prepare to launch the first 5 Day Giveaway by a major brand. The 5 Day PUMA Manchester launches on Monday 26th May at 9am GMT.
My efforts to get a customised version of a third party blog management system retrofitted to support comment voting have proven unsuccessful so far. I’ve deemed this necessary to combat voter fraud in future giveaways. Maybe I’m being paranoid. We’ll soon find out.
A couple of weeks ago, I reached out to a couple of the main blog commenting system developers (Disqus and SezWho) with feature requests that would add this facility to their web applications.
Disqus’ Daniel Ha thanked me for my suggestion but bowed out from adding this feature to Disqus stating they were unable to help right now.
SezWho actually approached me about helping but have proven a little slow in backing up their initial enthusiasm with action.
Both companies got back to me in record time, it must be added and I still hope I hear back from SezWho in time for Monday’s launch…
In any case, I’ve decided that the 5 Day PUMA Manchester Giveaway competition will go ahead at 9am on Monday with or without outside help from SezWho.
Perhaps blogging earlier about my search for assistance would have helped. At the very least, it would have been enlightening to others. After being inspired by a fantastic post on sharing good and bad experiences using a company blog, I’m posting this now.
Looking For Outside Developer Help
I initially looked at paying a web developer to code a custom plugin to provide the features I want in a Comment Voting plugin and tried using freelancer jobsite, Elance to approach developers. I tried Elance after reading Melissa Chang’s post about her successful experiences with the online freelancer marketplace.
A week plus long effort on Elance drew a blank, attracting only one bid from a developer who failed to prove he had the skills to code the plugin I envisioned.
I then turned to my online and offline network of collaborators. Highly regarded WordPress theme designer and developer, Adii of adii.co.za who designed this site was extremely helpful in pointing me to talented US web developer, Matt Harzewski of webmaster-source.com. Matt was professionalism personified in his attitude and response to my initial query.
Manchester, UK based graphic designer Leanda Ryan kindly recommended another US developer, Brett Terpstra of circlesixdesign.com, who happened to be too busy with other commitments to take on the project.
My small band of followers on Twitter, the microblogging community of the moment actually netted a real find. @WebFreelancer, got in touch after I approached him on Twitter and offered some very helpful suggestions even though he was tied up with other commitments.
All in all it was a very useful exercise though fraught with uncertainty.
Just as I had put together a neat specification for Matt to follow, Tedd Corman of SezWho got in touch to offer to develop the plugin. I’m still waiting to hear how far he got.
I learnt a great deal about collaborating with others on the web this week.
Social media forces all parties to be more accountable which can be only a good thing.
Knowing what you want always helps.
Here’s to an interesting time next week with the 5 Day PUMA Manchester Giveaway.
Photo credit: www.polyweb.com
Related posts:
- Announcing The Winner of the 5 Day PUMA Manchester Giveaway
- The 5 Day PUMA Manchester Giveaway
- Got Something To Say? Disqus this…
- Better Late Than Never: That PUMA Manchester Gig Review
- British iPhone Giveaway: Summary of Events
I am impressed of the concept.
@unnikuttan:
Why thank you!
Get involved in the 5 Day PUMA Manchester giveaway when it starts… let me know what you think!