Thank you to all the voters that supported the Seats @ Meets cause.
Sincerely,
Marilynn
The Large Category Finalists:
Monday, 19 December 2011
Are You Kidding Me?
Wow! All I can say is wow. There was no shuffle up in this round like there was in all the previous rounds. That's just weird. Why not? And I will not comment any further because I truly believe I will say something completely un-PC. Unbelievable!!
Thank you to all the voters that supported the Seats @ Meets cause.
Sincerely,
Marilynn
The Large Category Finalists:
Thank you to all the voters that supported the Seats @ Meets cause.
Sincerely,
Marilynn
The Large Category Finalists:
Friday, 16 December 2011
Daily Summary & Comments
Dec.16 at noon - 655 votes today. Ended in 16th place but now we wait for the results Dec.19th noon.
Dec.15 at 11pm - 870 votes today (9194 total. 16th place)
Dec.14 at 11pm - 933 votes today (8324 total. 15th place)
Dec.13 at 11pm - 945 votes today (7409 total. 15th place)
Dec.12 at 12am - 899 votes today (6464 total. 15th place)
Dec.11 at 11pm - 600 votes today (5587 total. 16th place. Thank God the weekend is over!!)
Dec.10 at 11pm - 580 votes today (4987 total. 16th place. Weekend wilt meets Christmas shopping!)
Dec.9 at 12am - 842 votes today (4407 total. 15th place. The weekend wilt is upon us. Please let it not be so!)
Dec.8 at 11pm - 899 votes today (3565 total. 14th place)
Dec.7 at 11pm - 878 votes today (2666 total. 15th place at the time)
Dec.6 at 11pm - 1051 votes today (1788 total to date. Wow, where were all these voters during Round 3?)
Dec.5 at 11pm - 737 votes recorded (Our biggest daily tally since I've been keeping track)
Comments:
Dec.16 at noon - Wild numbers of votes logged for groups ending up in places 6 thru 11. Can't wait to see the shake-up! The "Raise a Hand" group ended in 6th place, up from 11th earlier today...ya, right!
Dec.16 at 6am - There's been some crazy stuff going on over the last couple of days. The "Raise a Hand" group has obviously joined some kind of an auto-bot vote website because in 2 days they've amassed 9600 votes, taking them from 28th place to 11th as I write this. I suppose you can't blame them...they were out of the running anyway. I wonder if they think Aviva won't notice. And like I mentioned yesterday, there have been some others whose placements have jumped up considerably in the last few days. Maybe it's the extra 3 votes everyone had that's made the difference...who knows. Just keep voting they way you've always been voting. It's not over yet!
Dec.15 at 6am - 15th place. There was very little vote removal last night, from the same groups as always. I'll be interested to see the final shake-up since there's a few groups whose placements have changed quite dramatically in the last day or two. The top 6 have been consistent for days now. 7th thru 12th...lots of shuffling going on. Makes me wonder what they're doing to have recruited so many new voters in a 24 hour period. I'm just sayin'....
Dec.14 at 6am - 15th place. Ditto to everything I've said below. Let's aim for over 1000 votes today.
Dec.13 at 6am - 16th place. Four days left, including today, to vote. Ignore our placement at the moment. The final vote calculations have never ceased to surprise in any of the previous rounds. This one will be the same. I hate to be cliche right now but it's not over 'til it's over. The most important thing right now is to keep voting...right to the bitter end.
Dec.12 at 6am - 16th place. And the not so good news...we had votes removed last night. Only 22 that I can tell but then I really don't know what goes on in the 7 hours I'm sleeping. Compared to the other groups that have consistently had votes removed, up to as many as 1200+ last night, this is minor. But still, we need all our votes to count. All I can say is keep voting. Keep asking people to join us (I've recruited 4 new voters in the last week). And keep it legal. Duplicate passwords, 10 Minute mail, Guerrilla Mail, excessive numbers of votes from the same IP address...all questionable and probably illegal. Stay away from it.
Dec.11 at 6am - Back up to 14th place after votes were removed overnight. Again, Seats@Meets number did not decease overnight. I'm thinking Christmas shopping has taken the voters away from voting all across the country. Daily vote tallies were lower for 25 of the 30 groups. The other 5 groups...3 of the 5 had votes removed overnight. Our rival track group was one of those unlucky 3. Only 6 days left to vote.
Dec.10 at 6am - Sitting in 15th place. Everyone got a free pass last night or maybe the groups getting votes removed have finally changed their ways. It's simple, if we vote on Saturday and Sunday like we did on Tuesday (Dec6) we can overtake several groups. This is our chance to make a move...when some of the other groups are lax on their weekend votes. Please remember to vote this weekend.
Dec.9 at 6am - Again, sitting in 12th after vote removals from the same groups.Where are the other 150+ voters from Dec.6? Please come back! The dreaded weekend is just around the corner. Please help to remind each other to vote today and through the weekend. Keep voting. Keep it legal and there will be no surprises like there was last night for the group that's sitting in 30th at the moment...they were in 6th last night at last check!
Dec.8 at 6am - Sitting in 12th place after the votes were removed from the same groups again overnight. We can't rely on votes being removed from other groups to win. We have to win this by voting like the leading groups. The top 4 groups right now haven't had any votes removed overnight. The top 10 groups are logging daily votes of 1000-2900. We need to be in that range to make top 10.
Dec.7 at 6am - The same groups that had votes removed yesterday had votes removed again, from as little as 68 to as high as 571. Seats@Meets' number was not smaller, which is good, but it was only 3 votes larger than at 11pm. I'm hoping that means that absolutely everyone, except for the 3, voted before 11pm. Good work voters! Keep 'em rolling in again today. Keep it legal.
Dec.6 at 6am - The morning vote tallies are always interesting to me. Aviva is watching for the suspicious votes right from the get-go this round. Votes were removed from 7 of the top 18 groups overnight, ranging from about 50 to as many as 720. That's almost as many votes as we logged in the whole first day! Seats@Meets was not in the group whose numbers were lower in the morning. Keep up the good work. Keep recruiting. Keep it legal.
Dec.15 at 11pm - 870 votes today (9194 total. 16th place)
Dec.14 at 11pm - 933 votes today (8324 total. 15th place)
Dec.13 at 11pm - 945 votes today (7409 total. 15th place)
Dec.12 at 12am - 899 votes today (6464 total. 15th place)
Dec.11 at 11pm - 600 votes today (5587 total. 16th place. Thank God the weekend is over!!)
Dec.10 at 11pm - 580 votes today (4987 total. 16th place. Weekend wilt meets Christmas shopping!)
Dec.9 at 12am - 842 votes today (4407 total. 15th place. The weekend wilt is upon us. Please let it not be so!)
Dec.8 at 11pm - 899 votes today (3565 total. 14th place)
Dec.7 at 11pm - 878 votes today (2666 total. 15th place at the time)
Dec.6 at 11pm - 1051 votes today (1788 total to date. Wow, where were all these voters during Round 3?)
Dec.5 at 11pm - 737 votes recorded (Our biggest daily tally since I've been keeping track)
Comments:
Dec.16 at noon - Wild numbers of votes logged for groups ending up in places 6 thru 11. Can't wait to see the shake-up! The "Raise a Hand" group ended in 6th place, up from 11th earlier today...ya, right!
Dec.16 at 6am - There's been some crazy stuff going on over the last couple of days. The "Raise a Hand" group has obviously joined some kind of an auto-bot vote website because in 2 days they've amassed 9600 votes, taking them from 28th place to 11th as I write this. I suppose you can't blame them...they were out of the running anyway. I wonder if they think Aviva won't notice. And like I mentioned yesterday, there have been some others whose placements have jumped up considerably in the last few days. Maybe it's the extra 3 votes everyone had that's made the difference...who knows. Just keep voting they way you've always been voting. It's not over yet!
Dec.15 at 6am - 15th place. There was very little vote removal last night, from the same groups as always. I'll be interested to see the final shake-up since there's a few groups whose placements have changed quite dramatically in the last day or two. The top 6 have been consistent for days now. 7th thru 12th...lots of shuffling going on. Makes me wonder what they're doing to have recruited so many new voters in a 24 hour period. I'm just sayin'....
Dec.14 at 6am - 15th place. Ditto to everything I've said below. Let's aim for over 1000 votes today.
Dec.13 at 6am - 16th place. Four days left, including today, to vote. Ignore our placement at the moment. The final vote calculations have never ceased to surprise in any of the previous rounds. This one will be the same. I hate to be cliche right now but it's not over 'til it's over. The most important thing right now is to keep voting...right to the bitter end.
Dec.12 at 6am - 16th place. And the not so good news...we had votes removed last night. Only 22 that I can tell but then I really don't know what goes on in the 7 hours I'm sleeping. Compared to the other groups that have consistently had votes removed, up to as many as 1200+ last night, this is minor. But still, we need all our votes to count. All I can say is keep voting. Keep asking people to join us (I've recruited 4 new voters in the last week). And keep it legal. Duplicate passwords, 10 Minute mail, Guerrilla Mail, excessive numbers of votes from the same IP address...all questionable and probably illegal. Stay away from it.
Dec.11 at 6am - Back up to 14th place after votes were removed overnight. Again, Seats@Meets number did not decease overnight. I'm thinking Christmas shopping has taken the voters away from voting all across the country. Daily vote tallies were lower for 25 of the 30 groups. The other 5 groups...3 of the 5 had votes removed overnight. Our rival track group was one of those unlucky 3. Only 6 days left to vote.
Dec.10 at 6am - Sitting in 15th place. Everyone got a free pass last night or maybe the groups getting votes removed have finally changed their ways. It's simple, if we vote on Saturday and Sunday like we did on Tuesday (Dec6) we can overtake several groups. This is our chance to make a move...when some of the other groups are lax on their weekend votes. Please remember to vote this weekend.
Dec.9 at 6am - Again, sitting in 12th after vote removals from the same groups.Where are the other 150+ voters from Dec.6? Please come back! The dreaded weekend is just around the corner. Please help to remind each other to vote today and through the weekend. Keep voting. Keep it legal and there will be no surprises like there was last night for the group that's sitting in 30th at the moment...they were in 6th last night at last check!
Dec.8 at 6am - Sitting in 12th place after the votes were removed from the same groups again overnight. We can't rely on votes being removed from other groups to win. We have to win this by voting like the leading groups. The top 4 groups right now haven't had any votes removed overnight. The top 10 groups are logging daily votes of 1000-2900. We need to be in that range to make top 10.
Dec.7 at 6am - The same groups that had votes removed yesterday had votes removed again, from as little as 68 to as high as 571. Seats@Meets' number was not smaller, which is good, but it was only 3 votes larger than at 11pm. I'm hoping that means that absolutely everyone, except for the 3, voted before 11pm. Good work voters! Keep 'em rolling in again today. Keep it legal.
Dec.6 at 6am - The morning vote tallies are always interesting to me. Aviva is watching for the suspicious votes right from the get-go this round. Votes were removed from 7 of the top 18 groups overnight, ranging from about 50 to as many as 720. That's almost as many votes as we logged in the whole first day! Seats@Meets was not in the group whose numbers were lower in the morning. Keep up the good work. Keep recruiting. Keep it legal.
Saturday, 3 December 2011
Vote Like a Maniac
Some very impressive teamwork happened the last 4 days of Round 3. Something changed on Sunday and the votes just kept pouring in. I recorded that there was over 470 votes...on Sunday! That's a great number for a Sunday at 165 more votes than the Sunday before. And then Miraculous Monday happened...about 680 votes! Well done everyone and a big shout out of THANKS to all the voters supporting this great idea. Now let's see at least 680+ votes for 12 days in a row.
To guarantee a win we need to see the number of votes grow each and every day as we gain new recruits. And we MUST vote on the weekends too! There's only one Saturday and one Sunday during this round of voting. PLEASE make those weekend votes...Please!!
It's not too late to find more recruits to help vote us into the Top 10. Please encourage everyone you know, again, to join us in this last push for the $150,000. We cannot leave this just to our Facebook and Twitter friends...we need the support from the immediate community as well. Our social network supporters will follow what our local supporters do. Everybody's grandmother needs to be voting for this! Grandpas too!!
There are some fierce competitors in this upcoming Semi-Final Round. For example, one of our strongest competitors is Trenton High School. They made it to the Semi-Finals in the First Round of voting. They are looking for money for a new track. You may also recognise them as one of the Finalists from the Friday Night Feats competition. Based on the votes they were logging each day in that contest...they finished with over 13,000 votes...it tells me they have lots of supporters and you can bet they will be voting like mad in this last round of the Aviva contest. Let's give 'em a run for their money...pun intended! There are 29 other groups in our category, some of them logging very large numbers per day.
There is no room for forgotten votes in this round.
Remember, there's a lot of wild and crazy things going on out there with some groups doing anything and everything, be it legal or not, to try and get their group to the Top 10. See the previous post A Level Playing Field? as a reminder. We cannot leave our fate in the hands of anyone else. We need to take responsibility for this to win it. Keep voting and keep it legal!
We all know what to do come Monday December 5th. There is one small change in this Semi-Final Round though. These instructions are directly from the Aviva website:
I have enjoyed this journey with you. Let's finish it with gusto!
Sincerely,
Marilynn
Click here to read the latest Brockville Recorder & Times article regarding Seats @ Meets
To guarantee a win we need to see the number of votes grow each and every day as we gain new recruits. And we MUST vote on the weekends too! There's only one Saturday and one Sunday during this round of voting. PLEASE make those weekend votes...Please!!
It's not too late to find more recruits to help vote us into the Top 10. Please encourage everyone you know, again, to join us in this last push for the $150,000. We cannot leave this just to our Facebook and Twitter friends...we need the support from the immediate community as well. Our social network supporters will follow what our local supporters do. Everybody's grandmother needs to be voting for this! Grandpas too!!
There are some fierce competitors in this upcoming Semi-Final Round. For example, one of our strongest competitors is Trenton High School. They made it to the Semi-Finals in the First Round of voting. They are looking for money for a new track. You may also recognise them as one of the Finalists from the Friday Night Feats competition. Based on the votes they were logging each day in that contest...they finished with over 13,000 votes...it tells me they have lots of supporters and you can bet they will be voting like mad in this last round of the Aviva contest. Let's give 'em a run for their money...pun intended! There are 29 other groups in our category, some of them logging very large numbers per day.
There is no room for forgotten votes in this round.
Remember, there's a lot of wild and crazy things going on out there with some groups doing anything and everything, be it legal or not, to try and get their group to the Top 10. See the previous post A Level Playing Field? as a reminder. We cannot leave our fate in the hands of anyone else. We need to take responsibility for this to win it. Keep voting and keep it legal!
We all know what to do come Monday December 5th. There is one small change in this Semi-Final Round though. These instructions are directly from the Aviva website:
The semi-final voting round lasts only 12 days, from Dec. 5-16. Just like previous rounds, you will have 15 votes to use. However, you can still only vote for the same idea once per day (or 12 times). We encourage you to use your remaining votes towards other ideas, or, at the end of the round, you can choose to leave them unused.I would like to ask a favour for those 3 extra votes that you cannot give to Seats @ Meets. As I have mentioned, I live in Burlington and there is a very worthy idea here that I would have voted for if it were not for Seats @ Meets being my focus. Please check out this link http://www.avivacommunityfund.org/ideas/acf11368 and if you feel you would like to give your support to the Take a Seat Campaign at Burlington Central High School, I would be greatly appreciative, as I'm sure they would be too. They are in the Medium Category so they are not competing against Seats @ Meets. Keep your votes going to make the backsides of Ontarians more comfortable...in Brockville and Burlington.
I have enjoyed this journey with you. Let's finish it with gusto!
Sincerely,
Marilynn
Click here to read the latest Brockville Recorder & Times article regarding Seats @ Meets
Sunday, 27 November 2011
A Level Playing Field?
Things are never really as they seem. It appears Seats @ Meets is in 11th Place at the moment. Why do I say that? Because I had my eyes opened to the world of "contesting" and "vote exchanging" this week. I have been closely following the Top 18 ideas and recording the daily votes for each since the beginning of Round 2. I do this so I might have something of interest to write about in this blog. From the day I started keeping track I noticed some curious anomolies that made me do some digging. I only wish I had started the digging sooner. So let me tell you what I discovered.
There is a whole industry out there dedicated to winning contests. ContestMob is just one website I found that writes about "Tricks of the Trade for Entering Online Sweepstakes". At this site I found a blog post about "100 Ideas on How to Get Votes for Online Voting Contests" among other very interesting posts for every aspect of this contesting world. It seems to me like this would be as time consuming as a full-time job. Contesting is not for the impatient or weak at heart. This is serious stuff.
Vote exchanging seems to be the biggie when trying to win a contest such as the one we are all voting for right now. There is a whole host of websites dedicated to helping you find voters for your cause. Get Online Votes turned out to be an interesting site to peruse. Just typing the word aviva in the search box on this website made the investigation easy. Finally, it started to make sense to me how some of these groups in the lead were amassing so many daily, and inconsistent, votes. Another website I found with some rather interesting posts is the smartcanucks forum. Hmmm...now it's all making sense to me why some groups come out of nowhere and within a few days are near the top of the leader board.
Initially, I was angered by what seemed to be blatant cheating by some groups in this contest. I searched every one of the Top 18 groups to see what I could find. That was also an eye-opening experience. Some of the groups near the top are doing an exceptional job of getting their cause out to the world using all the typical methods that are considered legit, such as lots of media coverage, Facebook, Twitter and Google+. And some are using the vote exchange option. Some are using sources like Kijiji to ask for votes. There's even bot-automated voting websites that can be utilized, at a price, to up the number of votes, but I've read that these are always considered illegal...thankfully!
What I was glad to see was that Seats @ Meets was not involved in any vote exchange websites...at least not that I could find anyway. What I did notice was that some of the groups that are ahead of us tend to use Twitter much more than do the voters for Seats @ Meets. The power of the social networks is apparent here. There was one blog post that anaylized and detailed how many votes you might expect from your contact list...simplified, if you have 4000 contacts or friends you can expect only 80 votes. Wow, who knew? What this also tells me is that Seats @ Meets actually has a pretty good base of about 500 legit voters...consistent voters...well, with the exception of weekends! We will definitely need to work on weekend voting in the Final Round.
The more I thought about what I found, the more I wavered back and forth about what to do. Do I tell Aviva what I found? Are they aware of what is going on out there? Do they even care because, really, the more people that log onto their website the more people become aware of them and the good thing that they are doing for the community. They would have to pay a whole lot more than a million dollars to get that kind of reach with any other type of ad campaign. Don't get me wrong. I think what Aviva is doing is fantastic. It's the weirdness that overtakes some people when this kind of money is at stake that is worrisome. You should read some of the stories that have happened in the contesting world over prizes worth a measly fraction of what Aviva is giving away. People can get downright nutty at the thought of something free!
Disheartened would be a good way to describe how I felt when all this came to light for me. I even considered not voting anymore because what's the point...we'd be left in the dust of the vote exchange users. But I'm not a quitter and I started to think about how to adjust and continue competing. And then the most amazing thing happened!
As I mentioned at the top of this post, I have been recording the daily votes of the Top 18 since the beginning of Round 2. I record the accumulated votes at around 11pm each night. I do this to see who to watch out for and also to see how many voters each group has. It has been interesting to watch the votes progress. Some groups plug along with a consistent number of votes each day, and believe it or not, Brockville is not the only group to suck at weekend voting. Some groups are all over the place with their daily votes...one day they will log about 500 votes and the very next day will log over 1000 votes and the day after that about 600 votes. This kind of voting makes me wonder. Just so you know, Seats @ Meets logs about 470 daily, with the occasional 500+ day and then our 300+ weekend days.
Here's the amazing thing. Last night, as usual, I recorded everyone's dailies. Each morning I also check to see how many votes happened overnight just before I place my vote. Well, low and behold...didn't 12 out of the top 15 groups have votes taken away from them! And Seats@ Meets was NOT one of the groups with votes taken away. Some groups had some pretty substantial numbers of votes removed. Ha...that disheartened feeling started to leave me! Aviva is at least aware of what's going on, to what extent I don't know. The dust from the groups in the lead is starting to thin!
So why have I told you all this? Maybe to level the playing field? Based on what I found online this past week I gather there are not a lot of "contesters" in Seats @ Meets group of supporters otherwise I would have found some evidence of it. And isn't it always better to know what you're up against in a contest like this? You can bet if I ever get involved with another voting contest I will make sure everyone knows what they are in for and to win it they will have to work just a little harder to get the recruits necessary to stay in the running. I'm not sure if vote exchanging is legal in this or any contest and I'm certainly not advocating anyone do this, especially at this time in the contest. But when you think about it, vote exchanging is no different than asking people you don't know from Facebook or Twitter to vote for us. As long as the vote exchangers are using their legitimate email addresses and following the rules, is this any different than asking a Facebook "friend", whom you may not actually know, to vote with their legit address? Only the sponsor of any given contest can answer that question. I think Aviva has spoken. I take it that they are not sitting back and letting the votes come in from any wild and wooly source. It has to be hard to weed out the riff-raff in a contest of this magnitude. I can't even imagine what Aviva must see if I'm seeing what I've seen with only 18 groups on my radar.
I also tell you this to encourage you to keep voting right to the last day. The world is a crazy place with all kinds of individuals willing to do anything to get what they want. I believe that Seats @ Meets is a great cause and our voters have been true and loyal, albeit a little forgetful at times! I also believe Aviva is running a fair contest. If we just stay the course by continuing to vote and recruit more voters until the last minute on Wednesday at noon, we will reach the Finals! Seats @ Meets meets all the judging criteria that Aviva will be looking for. We just need to get ourselves in front of their judges in the Final Round to prove it.
Keep voting...it's not over yet. Not by a long shot!
There is a whole industry out there dedicated to winning contests. ContestMob is just one website I found that writes about "Tricks of the Trade for Entering Online Sweepstakes". At this site I found a blog post about "100 Ideas on How to Get Votes for Online Voting Contests" among other very interesting posts for every aspect of this contesting world. It seems to me like this would be as time consuming as a full-time job. Contesting is not for the impatient or weak at heart. This is serious stuff.
Vote exchanging seems to be the biggie when trying to win a contest such as the one we are all voting for right now. There is a whole host of websites dedicated to helping you find voters for your cause. Get Online Votes turned out to be an interesting site to peruse. Just typing the word aviva in the search box on this website made the investigation easy. Finally, it started to make sense to me how some of these groups in the lead were amassing so many daily, and inconsistent, votes. Another website I found with some rather interesting posts is the smartcanucks forum. Hmmm...now it's all making sense to me why some groups come out of nowhere and within a few days are near the top of the leader board.
Initially, I was angered by what seemed to be blatant cheating by some groups in this contest. I searched every one of the Top 18 groups to see what I could find. That was also an eye-opening experience. Some of the groups near the top are doing an exceptional job of getting their cause out to the world using all the typical methods that are considered legit, such as lots of media coverage, Facebook, Twitter and Google+. And some are using the vote exchange option. Some are using sources like Kijiji to ask for votes. There's even bot-automated voting websites that can be utilized, at a price, to up the number of votes, but I've read that these are always considered illegal...thankfully!
What I was glad to see was that Seats @ Meets was not involved in any vote exchange websites...at least not that I could find anyway. What I did notice was that some of the groups that are ahead of us tend to use Twitter much more than do the voters for Seats @ Meets. The power of the social networks is apparent here. There was one blog post that anaylized and detailed how many votes you might expect from your contact list...simplified, if you have 4000 contacts or friends you can expect only 80 votes. Wow, who knew? What this also tells me is that Seats @ Meets actually has a pretty good base of about 500 legit voters...consistent voters...well, with the exception of weekends! We will definitely need to work on weekend voting in the Final Round.
The more I thought about what I found, the more I wavered back and forth about what to do. Do I tell Aviva what I found? Are they aware of what is going on out there? Do they even care because, really, the more people that log onto their website the more people become aware of them and the good thing that they are doing for the community. They would have to pay a whole lot more than a million dollars to get that kind of reach with any other type of ad campaign. Don't get me wrong. I think what Aviva is doing is fantastic. It's the weirdness that overtakes some people when this kind of money is at stake that is worrisome. You should read some of the stories that have happened in the contesting world over prizes worth a measly fraction of what Aviva is giving away. People can get downright nutty at the thought of something free!
Disheartened would be a good way to describe how I felt when all this came to light for me. I even considered not voting anymore because what's the point...we'd be left in the dust of the vote exchange users. But I'm not a quitter and I started to think about how to adjust and continue competing. And then the most amazing thing happened!
As I mentioned at the top of this post, I have been recording the daily votes of the Top 18 since the beginning of Round 2. I record the accumulated votes at around 11pm each night. I do this to see who to watch out for and also to see how many voters each group has. It has been interesting to watch the votes progress. Some groups plug along with a consistent number of votes each day, and believe it or not, Brockville is not the only group to suck at weekend voting. Some groups are all over the place with their daily votes...one day they will log about 500 votes and the very next day will log over 1000 votes and the day after that about 600 votes. This kind of voting makes me wonder. Just so you know, Seats @ Meets logs about 470 daily, with the occasional 500+ day and then our 300+ weekend days.
Here's the amazing thing. Last night, as usual, I recorded everyone's dailies. Each morning I also check to see how many votes happened overnight just before I place my vote. Well, low and behold...didn't 12 out of the top 15 groups have votes taken away from them! And Seats@ Meets was NOT one of the groups with votes taken away. Some groups had some pretty substantial numbers of votes removed. Ha...that disheartened feeling started to leave me! Aviva is at least aware of what's going on, to what extent I don't know. The dust from the groups in the lead is starting to thin!
So why have I told you all this? Maybe to level the playing field? Based on what I found online this past week I gather there are not a lot of "contesters" in Seats @ Meets group of supporters otherwise I would have found some evidence of it. And isn't it always better to know what you're up against in a contest like this? You can bet if I ever get involved with another voting contest I will make sure everyone knows what they are in for and to win it they will have to work just a little harder to get the recruits necessary to stay in the running. I'm not sure if vote exchanging is legal in this or any contest and I'm certainly not advocating anyone do this, especially at this time in the contest. But when you think about it, vote exchanging is no different than asking people you don't know from Facebook or Twitter to vote for us. As long as the vote exchangers are using their legitimate email addresses and following the rules, is this any different than asking a Facebook "friend", whom you may not actually know, to vote with their legit address? Only the sponsor of any given contest can answer that question. I think Aviva has spoken. I take it that they are not sitting back and letting the votes come in from any wild and wooly source. It has to be hard to weed out the riff-raff in a contest of this magnitude. I can't even imagine what Aviva must see if I'm seeing what I've seen with only 18 groups on my radar.
I also tell you this to encourage you to keep voting right to the last day. The world is a crazy place with all kinds of individuals willing to do anything to get what they want. I believe that Seats @ Meets is a great cause and our voters have been true and loyal, albeit a little forgetful at times! I also believe Aviva is running a fair contest. If we just stay the course by continuing to vote and recruit more voters until the last minute on Wednesday at noon, we will reach the Finals! Seats @ Meets meets all the judging criteria that Aviva will be looking for. We just need to get ourselves in front of their judges in the Final Round to prove it.
Keep voting...it's not over yet. Not by a long shot!
Sunday, 20 November 2011
We Need to Vote on Weekends Too
Well, for most of this week, Seats @ Meets has been trading back and forth between 11th and 12th Place in the Aviva Fund Large Category. I don't really know what to say at this point because the longer we continue with this contest the less people remember to vote. What's up with that? The numbers are definitely going in the wrong direction.
We need to get to 10th Place to make it to the Final Round. This is very possible if we all remember to vote every day. The other 2 groups that we need to stay ahead of to remain in the Top 10 have very similar daily voting patterns to Seats @ Meets. The only difference that's putting those 2 groups ahead of us...they are logging close to their maximum votes every day.
And here's what our numbers look like:
Monday...........402 (Excellent for only ½-day voting)
Tuesday..........531 (Nice number!)
Wednesday......475 (56 missed votes)
Thursday.........470 (61 missed votes)
Friday............463 (68 missed votes)
Saturday.........315 (Won't get us to the Finals!)
Sunday...........306 (Ditto)
Edit - Nov.29/11 - here are the numbers from the rest of the voting days:
Monday...........479 (Pretty good for a Monday)
Tuesday..........494 (Tuesdays are our best voting days)
Wednesday......503 (Nice!)
Thursday.........469 (Oh no, the weekend is nearing)
Friday............405 (Can you see the pattern yet?)
Saturday.........345 (Ouch!)
Sunday...........471 (Much better...this was the day the blog post above got published)
Monday...........680 (Now that's what's going to get us to Top 10 of the Finals!)
End of edit
Combine all those missed votes and Seats @ Meets would be sitting in 9th Place right now. To make it to Top 10, we need to vote on weekends too. Round 2 weekend voting was also quite abysmal.
If you need a daily reminder to remember to vote, make the home page on your computer the Aviva vote page. Or send me your email address or cell phone number and I will send you a daily email or text message to remind you. I'd be happy to help...really!
Sincerely,
Marilynn
doorlady22@hotmail.com
We need to get to 10th Place to make it to the Final Round. This is very possible if we all remember to vote every day. The other 2 groups that we need to stay ahead of to remain in the Top 10 have very similar daily voting patterns to Seats @ Meets. The only difference that's putting those 2 groups ahead of us...they are logging close to their maximum votes every day.
And here's what our numbers look like:
Monday...........402 (Excellent for only ½-day voting)
Tuesday..........531 (Nice number!)
Wednesday......475 (56 missed votes)
Thursday.........470 (61 missed votes)
Friday............463 (68 missed votes)
Saturday.........315 (Won't get us to the Finals!)
Sunday...........306 (Ditto)
Edit - Nov.29/11 - here are the numbers from the rest of the voting days:
Monday...........479 (Pretty good for a Monday)
Tuesday..........494 (Tuesdays are our best voting days)
Wednesday......503 (Nice!)
Thursday.........469 (Oh no, the weekend is nearing)
Friday............405 (Can you see the pattern yet?)
Saturday.........345 (Ouch!)
Sunday...........471 (Much better...this was the day the blog post above got published)
Monday...........680 (Now that's what's going to get us to Top 10 of the Finals!)
End of edit
Combine all those missed votes and Seats @ Meets would be sitting in 9th Place right now. To make it to Top 10, we need to vote on weekends too. Round 2 weekend voting was also quite abysmal.
If you need a daily reminder to remember to vote, make the home page on your computer the Aviva vote page. Or send me your email address or cell phone number and I will send you a daily email or text message to remind you. I'd be happy to help...really!
Sincerely,
Marilynn
doorlady22@hotmail.com
Sunday, 13 November 2011
Round 3 Repeat - Hey Brockville...it's time for the 2nd of 3 major Pep Rallies!
How quickly things change!
The final day of Round 2 voting was a crazy flurry of voting by all groups and Seats @ Meets ended in 11th Place, less than 100 votes behind 10th Place! Although that means we missed making it to the Semi-Finals this time it doesn't mean we are out of the race. There are 3 Rounds of Voting to get to the Semi-Finals. Welcome to qualifying Round 3. We start voting again Monday Nov.14th, at noon, and continue 'til noon on Nov.30th.
You already know what to do. Vote every day until you have used up all 15 of your votes. And just as important...find others to join the cause. If each one of us were to find just one more person to register and vote we'd be an awesome force. We have the momentum...in the first round we logged about 3800 votes, in the second round about 8200 votes. Just imagine what we can do in Round 3. This round will keep us in fighting form for the Final Voting Round!
The following is a repeat of the very first post of this blog. This is for the benefit of the new people you will be sending this on to. When people know the whole story they are more willing to join the cause. I, for one, had no interest in helping when all I got was an email with a link to the Aviva Community Fund challenge and told to "Vote for us". It was not until the whole story was explained to me by my sister that I got excited about the idea and joined. Please pass this blog's link along to everyone you know...email, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, whatever...get the story out and people will join us! It's a great cause and a great addition to the whole community.
Originally posted October 22, 2011
Hey Brockville...it's time for a major Pep Rally!
If all you had to do to help a friend earn $150,000, no strings attached, was to vote on-line once per day for 15 days, would you do it? Of course you would, because the reward is so great in relation to the time invested.
Did you know there is an insurance company that is giving away $1,000,000 to the several ideas for community improvement that show the most enthusiastic support? Wouldn't it feel good to get money from an insurance company just because...? An insurance company that wants to give back to the community is also worthy of support.
Hundreds of groups across the country have submitted their ideas to the Aviva Community Fund. One of the great ideas is right here in our community and we need the support of the whole community to push this idea to the forefront. Click on the yellow banner in the sidebar to the right to go to the Aviva Community Fund website and read about the idea submitted by the Friends of Thousand Islands Secondary School.
As you may know, the finest of Ontario's high school track and field stars will be competing for gold this June at the 2012 OFSAA Track & Field Meet here in Brockville at the recently updated track & field facility at TISS. This is the largest event to be hosted at TISS to date. You may also know that the lack of seating does not reflect the rest of this state-of-the-art facility. We need to increase the seating to accommodate not only this upcoming OFSSA event, but all other community events that take place at this location; events like the Brockville Bowl, the Kinsmen-Hungerford Meet, the Terry Fox event, the Senior games and minor league football to name a few.
The cost of the new bleacher seats is approximately $200,000. We must buy these bleachers regardless of where the money comes from. With enough supporting votes from the community, the Aviva Community Fund will take care of up to $150,000 of this expense.
And here's the best part...the more money we can get from Aviva, the less we have to ask from the community in the way of donations. So, which would you rather do, register on the Aviva website to vote on-line once per day for 15 days (approximately 15 minutes of your time in total) or open your wallet when the fundraisers come knocking on your door?
Let me just put a little challenge out to you Brockville.
The little community of Nunavut, population around 5000, has already made it as a semifinalist for the same category in which we are competing because they tallied almost 10,000 votes in Round 1 of this challenge. We were only able to log just shy of 3,800 votes. Really Brockville?! Are we going to stand back and let a tiny little community, with only one fifth of our population, take this from us? We have a second chance to show Canada and Aviva that Brockville cares about its community. This just isn't for TISS, this is for the whole Thousand Islands regional community. And we need the whole community to make this happen.
Voting for Round 2 of the Aviva Community Fund Challenge starts Monday, October 24th and ends November 9th. That's 17 days to cast your 15 votes, one per day. Please go to the Aviva Registration page to register your email address and VOTE, VOTE, VOTE! Use all 15 of your votes.. You get 15 votes per registered email address. Share this with all your friends and family using email, Facebook
Let's go Brockville. Let's show Aviva that we are worthy of hosting the best in the province with the best facilities possible.
Please VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!
Sincerely,
Marilynn Wykes
~Born in Brockville
~Former user of TISS track facilities
~Sister to 2 TISS teachers
~Friend to several TISS teachers
~Admirer of TISS and its reputation for fostering athletic excellence in its students
~Head cheerleader in the quest to get free money from the insurance company in the Aviva Community Challenge
~Resident of Burlington, Ontario
The final day of Round 2 voting was a crazy flurry of voting by all groups and Seats @ Meets ended in 11th Place, less than 100 votes behind 10th Place! Although that means we missed making it to the Semi-Finals this time it doesn't mean we are out of the race. There are 3 Rounds of Voting to get to the Semi-Finals. Welcome to qualifying Round 3. We start voting again Monday Nov.14th, at noon, and continue 'til noon on Nov.30th.
You already know what to do. Vote every day until you have used up all 15 of your votes. And just as important...find others to join the cause. If each one of us were to find just one more person to register and vote we'd be an awesome force. We have the momentum...in the first round we logged about 3800 votes, in the second round about 8200 votes. Just imagine what we can do in Round 3. This round will keep us in fighting form for the Final Voting Round!
The following is a repeat of the very first post of this blog. This is for the benefit of the new people you will be sending this on to. When people know the whole story they are more willing to join the cause. I, for one, had no interest in helping when all I got was an email with a link to the Aviva Community Fund challenge and told to "Vote for us". It was not until the whole story was explained to me by my sister that I got excited about the idea and joined. Please pass this blog's link along to everyone you know...email, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, whatever...get the story out and people will join us! It's a great cause and a great addition to the whole community.
Originally posted October 22, 2011
Hey Brockville...it's time for a major Pep Rally!
If all you had to do to help a friend earn $150,000, no strings attached, was to vote on-line once per day for 15 days, would you do it? Of course you would, because the reward is so great in relation to the time invested.
Did you know there is an insurance company that is giving away $1,000,000 to the several ideas for community improvement that show the most enthusiastic support? Wouldn't it feel good to get money from an insurance company just because...? An insurance company that wants to give back to the community is also worthy of support.
As you may know, the finest of Ontario's high school track and field stars will be competing for gold this June at the 2012 OFSAA Track & Field Meet here in Brockville at the recently updated track & field facility at TISS. This is the largest event to be hosted at TISS to date. You may also know that the lack of seating does not reflect the rest of this state-of-the-art facility. We need to increase the seating to accommodate not only this upcoming OFSSA event, but all other community events that take place at this location; events like the Brockville Bowl, the Kinsmen-Hungerford Meet, the Terry Fox event, the Senior games and minor league football to name a few.
 |
| A recent Brockville Bowl event at BCI illustrating the size of crowds attending this event. TISS hosts this event every second year. This kind of crowd deserves more bleacher seating at the TISS facility. |
The cost of the new bleacher seats is approximately $200,000. We must buy these bleachers regardless of where the money comes from. With enough supporting votes from the community, the Aviva Community Fund will take care of up to $150,000 of this expense.
And here's the best part...the more money we can get from Aviva, the less we have to ask from the community in the way of donations. So, which would you rather do, register on the Aviva website to vote on-line once per day for 15 days (approximately 15 minutes of your time in total) or open your wallet when the fundraisers come knocking on your door?
Let me just put a little challenge out to you Brockville.
The little community of Nunavut, population around 5000, has already made it as a semifinalist for the same category in which we are competing because they tallied almost 10,000 votes in Round 1 of this challenge. We were only able to log just shy of 3,800 votes. Really Brockville?! Are we going to stand back and let a tiny little community, with only one fifth of our population, take this from us? We have a second chance to show Canada and Aviva that Brockville cares about its community. This just isn't for TISS, this is for the whole Thousand Islands regional community. And we need the whole community to make this happen.
Voting for Round 2 of the Aviva Community Fund Challenge starts Monday, October 24th and ends November 9th. That's 17 days to cast your 15 votes, one per day. Please go to the Aviva Registration page to register your email address and VOTE, VOTE, VOTE! Use all 15 of your votes.. You get 15 votes per registered email address. Share this with all your friends and family using email, Facebook
Let's go Brockville. Let's show Aviva that we are worthy of hosting the best in the province with the best facilities possible.
Please VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!
Sincerely,
Marilynn Wykes
~Born in Brockville
~Former user of TISS track facilities
~Sister to 2 TISS teachers
~Friend to several TISS teachers
~Admirer of TISS and its reputation for fostering athletic excellence in its students
~Head cheerleader in the quest to get free money from the insurance company in the Aviva Community Challenge
~Resident of Burlington, Ontario
Friday, 4 November 2011
Analysis - Can We Hold on to Top 10?
There are 5 full days of voting left in this Round and we are again sitting in 5th place at the moment. We have been trading 4th place with the TumbleBus Gymnastics group from BC but they took a fairly sizeable 200+ vote lead over us lastnight, as of this morning, early. We will most likely regain 4th place later today...but for how long? They have been consistently logging about 540 votes per day and we have only been logging 475 daily. It's only a matter of time until they overtake us for good. But this doesn't have to be the case as we have somewhere around 580 registered voters. About a hundred are forgetting to vote everyday.
Here's what the Top 10 look like, as of this writing:
1st place -Labrador SPCA, Goose Bay, NL 9445 votes to date
2nd place - Second Chance Pet Network, Dryden ON 9181 votes to date
3rd place - Rescue Horses, Sussex, NB 6620 votes to date
4th place - TumbleBus Gymnastics, Coquitlam, BC 5456 votes to date
5th place - Seats @ Meets, Brockville, ON 5426 votes to date
6th place - Maison Scout, St.Jean sur Richilieu, QC 5046 votes to date
7th place - Scouts Canada's National, Canada-wide 4958 votes to date
8th place - Kids First Gymnastics, Windsor, ON 4539 votes to date
9th place - Save the Matthew, Bonavista, NL 4404 votes to date
10th place - Cour de l'ecole Coeur, Montreal, QC 4292 votes to date
The groups we need to worry about are:
I know some of us are probably starting to feel voter fatique about now. This process is a long one for a reason. Aviva is not going to give money to groups that are not committed to their cause. And they are giving out a lot of money. The amount of money is definitely worth the time commitment. Remember, the seats will cost in excess of $200,000.
I can't stress how important this Round of voting is. If we make it to the Top 10 then we are in the Semi-Finals and don't have to start voting again until December 5th. The Final Round is also 16 days of voting. But if we miss the Top 10 this time around we have to vote for an extra additional 16 days in Round 3 of Initial Voting. And, as much as I am committed to the very end of this contest, I would appreciate the 3 week break before the Final Round of voting. I'm positive you would too.
Just as important as remembering to vote every day is finding more supporters to vote for the Seats @ Meets cause. There will be 30 Semi-Finalists in each category size. We will have to compete against 30 very committed groups in the large category to be one of the 10 Finalists to have a chance at the money.
The only way we can make Top 10 happen, in this Round and the Final Round, is to recruit more voters now...lots more voters...and remember to vote everyday.
The break that we will have after we reach the Semi-Finals at the end of this round of voting will be a great opportunity to use as a recruiting blitz. Maybe there needs to be a big community bar-b-q/Pep Rally to recruit more voters. Something needs to be done to get more voters. Anybody got any ideas?
Click here to read the original post: Hey Brockville...it's time for a major Pep Rally!
Here's what the Top 10 look like, as of this writing:
1st place -Labrador SPCA, Goose Bay, NL 9445 votes to date
2nd place - Second Chance Pet Network, Dryden ON 9181 votes to date
3rd place - Rescue Horses, Sussex, NB 6620 votes to date
4th place - TumbleBus Gymnastics, Coquitlam, BC 5456 votes to date
5th place - Seats @ Meets, Brockville, ON 5426 votes to date
6th place - Maison Scout, St.Jean sur Richilieu, QC 5046 votes to date
7th place - Scouts Canada's National, Canada-wide 4958 votes to date
8th place - Kids First Gymnastics, Windsor, ON 4539 votes to date
9th place - Save the Matthew, Bonavista, NL 4404 votes to date
10th place - Cour de l'ecole Coeur, Montreal, QC 4292 votes to date
The groups we need to worry about are:
- the current 7th place Scouts Canada. They have come out of nowhere recently and are logging about 675 votes daily. It's only a matter of time before they surpass us at our current pace.
- the 10th place Cour de l'ecole Coeur. They have been typically hanging around 15th place and all of a sudden they are in 10th overnight. I haven't been keeping track of their daily scores because they were not a threat before today. They're on my radar now though.
- the 6th place Maison Scout is very consistent with their daily voting. They have about 500 registered voters and will overtake us soon if we continue to leave 100 votes on the table by forgetting to vote everyday.
- any group that has taken the time to go out into the community and recruit lots of voters. We won't know who they are until it's too late.
I know some of us are probably starting to feel voter fatique about now. This process is a long one for a reason. Aviva is not going to give money to groups that are not committed to their cause. And they are giving out a lot of money. The amount of money is definitely worth the time commitment. Remember, the seats will cost in excess of $200,000.
I can't stress how important this Round of voting is. If we make it to the Top 10 then we are in the Semi-Finals and don't have to start voting again until December 5th. The Final Round is also 16 days of voting. But if we miss the Top 10 this time around we have to vote for an extra additional 16 days in Round 3 of Initial Voting. And, as much as I am committed to the very end of this contest, I would appreciate the 3 week break before the Final Round of voting. I'm positive you would too.
Just as important as remembering to vote every day is finding more supporters to vote for the Seats @ Meets cause. There will be 30 Semi-Finalists in each category size. We will have to compete against 30 very committed groups in the large category to be one of the 10 Finalists to have a chance at the money.
The only way we can make Top 10 happen, in this Round and the Final Round, is to recruit more voters now...lots more voters...and remember to vote everyday.
The break that we will have after we reach the Semi-Finals at the end of this round of voting will be a great opportunity to use as a recruiting blitz. Maybe there needs to be a big community bar-b-q/Pep Rally to recruit more voters. Something needs to be done to get more voters. Anybody got any ideas?
 | |
Click here to read the original post: Hey Brockville...it's time for a major Pep Rally!
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