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In which Daniel, Drew and Greg talk about Father’s Day, unbelievable luck (and skill) in winning contests at conferences, Affiliate Summit East’s hotel being sold out, and WordPress optimization for site speed. Also, the last time we’ll talk about Game of Thrones until next spring. Probably.
No video this week. I’m sick and trust me, you don’t want me on camera. Here’s the recap:
- We kicked off with a bit about our Father’s Day weekends. Greg is, apparently, Aquaman.
- In the middle of recording, Drew was notified that he won a TrekDesk – a result of a contest he participated in while at BlogWorld recently.
- Contests at conferences? Totally worth it. They often don’t take much of your time and can result in big prizes… we explain the hows and whys.
- Speaking of conference prizes, I won a Blu-Ray player in a drawing at Think Tank last month. It arrived a couple of days ago and it’s awesome. Thanks to Snow Consulting and Paul’s TV. Now I just need a TV to hook it up to…
- We each previewed our upcoming sessions at Affiliate Summit East 2012.
- I talked at length about WordPress optimization and site speed. Thanks to a fantastic session at Affiliate Summit Central, I was able to cut my site’s load time in half. There are details about how I did it in the blog post I wrote over the weekend. The tool I talked about is webpagetest.org. The image scruncher program that I couldn’t remember the name of? It’s Image Optim (free, but Mac only).
- Lastly… Greg did his homework and watched the final two episodes of Game of Thrones. We love talking about the show, and we’re sad that we have to wait until next spring for season three. Until then, we’ll have to find something else to obsess over.
Lastly, here’s the shirt that Drew was talking about at the end of the show:
All this and more – thanks for listening! We’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave us a voice mail at 281-241-QAQN(7276). Also, you can email us at feedback@qaqn.com.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Greg, I am surprised that you would say, “We certainly made sure someone that was beneficial to our company would win,” with regards to running a drawing, as if it’s OK.
Even if that’s not unlawful (not sure if sweepstakes laws or other laws apply), it’s unethical.
Certainly not against the law but I disagree that its unethical. I didn’t say I would let my friends win, that would be crossing the line.
You sure these don’t fall under sweepstakes laws? They are strict online (
http://feedfront.com/archives/article001868), so I would think offline laws would apply, too.
If somebody is permitted to enter, but never has a chance to win, it’s unethical.
If I were to drop a card into a goldfish bowl at a CPA booth at ASE12 and I won the grand prize, I’m pretty sure the Marketing Director of the company would be very unhappy that I won and not one of their target attendees. The next time they have that drawing, someone will be fishing out cards like mine and stacking the deck. That just makes sense.
Regardless of the right and wrong, I think it’s naive to think this doesn’t happen all the time. If the contest has strict guidelines and rules, then those rules should be followed. I agree with that 100%. But I don’t think some of these contests have hard and fast rules and are open for subjective officiating. Daniel and Drew are great target subjects to win contests because they have platforms to spread the word about brands and they both do the right things to set themselves up to win contests so I don’t want to take away from their efforts. But…
They may be unhappy, but that doesn’t change the situation. I’ve frequently seen these drawings scheduled for a given time at a booth to bring people back and remove any suggestion of impropriety.
Cheating on taxes happens all the time, too. That doesn’t make it legitimate.
So then with Daniel and Drew, it would make sense for a company to give them a product to experience and talk about and provide disclosure that they got it for free. That’s a common practice and nobody is deceived.