Please Help Me Win a Contest

For more than a year, I've been running my Where In Ottawa photo challenge, giving many followers a chance to show that they know the city and to win a copy of my novel, Songsaengnim: A Korea Diary. A couple of times, I've extended the challenge to Where In The World.

I have now entred a contest and I'm calling on you to help me win it. And, if you do, you'll help shut me up on Twitter.

A few weeks ago, at the National Capital Craft Beer Week Festival, Mill Street had a tent set up with a video camera. They wanted people to record a message about why they loved Mill Street.

The brewery has been repeating this process at other festivals around Ontario. With the videos posted on their Web site, people are asked to vote for their favourite video. The top 10 videos that receive the most votes win. The prize is impressive: the winners receive a party at Mill Street Brew Pubs for them and 10 of their friends.

I recorded such a video (after all, Mill Street really is my favourite Ontario brewery). I talked about how I love the Ottawa brew pub: how, when I organize tweetups at the brew pub, I'm always delighted by the great food, the amazing beer, and, of course, the outstanding service.

Almost every day since my video has been posted on the contest site, I've been reminding my Twitter and Facebook followers to go to my video and vote for it. And so far, more than 70 votes have gone towards my video.

Thank you.

As great as your votes have been, I am far short of being in the top 10 videos. You can vote once a day, so there's an added chance of my video being bumped up to the top 10.

My thoughts were that if all of my Twitter followers were to go to my video only once and vote for it, that would account for 630 votes. If my Facebook friends also went (even if my followers also follow me on Twitter), that would be an additional 71 votes.

If all of you went today, I would have more than 770 votes, which would put me in a comfortable spot in the current top 10. If you went every day until the contest closes, on September 30, I would probably jump to the number-one video.

As I said, I've been reminding my followers almost every day to go to my video to vote. I'm sure many of you are growing tired of seeing that reminder each day. So, if you took a minute (it doesn't even take that long) to go to my video right now and vote, if I was to receive the 700 votes in one day, I would stop tweeting reminders until the final day of the contest, when I would appeal for a few more votes.

And who knows? You just might be one of the 10 friends I take with me to the party!

For those of you who have voted for my video, thank you so much. I really appreciate your support. Keep up the good work.