http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Around-the-Storage-Block-Blog/Blog-off-reality-blogger-contest/ba-p/96579 <p><font size="3"><img src="http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/12i9AFDFAD873D5E762/image-size/original?v=mpbl-1&amp;px=-1" border="0" alt="CartoonCalvin100X100.JPG" title="CartoonCalvin100X100.JPG" width="100" height="100" align="center" />&nbsp;By Calvin Zito, @<strong><a title="Follow me on Twitter" href="http://twitter.com/HPStorageGuy" target="_blank">HPStorageGuy</a></strong></font></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><font size="3">Early this year, I started to think about our next blogger day. We've done many of these in the past where we bring a group of independent bloggers to HP&nbsp;- we hadn't done a storage focused one in a while. When I talked to my colleague Marc Farley about it, he offered a great idea that <strong><a title="Thomas' blog" href="http://niketown588.com/" target="_blank">Thomas Jones </a></strong>had talked to Marc about. The idea was to take your typical reality show and apply it to a group a bloggers. </font></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><font size="3">The blogger contest was the topic of a few brainstorming conversations we had and it was obvious to Marc and I that Thomas was the guy to host the reality show. He kicked it off a few weeks ago with <strong><a href="http://niketown588.com/2011/07/11/cmon-down-you-are-the-next-contestant/" target="_blank">a "casting call" to select the contestants</a></strong>.&nbsp; I wanted to do a short post pointing you to the contestants:</font></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <ul> <li><font size="3"><font color="#000000"><strong>Luigi Danakos, </strong></font><strong><a href="http://www.nerdblurt.com/" target="_blank"><font color="#0000ff">http://www.nerdblurt.com/</font></a></strong>&nbsp;<font color="#000000">Twitter Handle: @nerdblurt</font></font></li> <li><font size="3"><strong>David Hurst,&nbsp; <a href="http://thesuperdave.com/" target="_blank"><font color="#0000ff">http://thesuperdave.com/</font></a></strong>&nbsp;T<font color="#000000">witter Handle: @</font>the_super_dave</font></li> <li><font size="3"><strong>Michael Letschin, <a href="http://solutionsarchitect.wordpress.com/" target="_blank"><font color="#0000ff">http://solutionsarchitect.wordpress.com/</font></a></strong>&nbsp;<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Tw</font><font color="#000000"><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">itter</font></font><font color="#000000"> Handle: @mletschin</font></font></li> <li><font size="3"><strong><strong>Matthew Norwood, </strong><a href="http://www.insearchoftech.com/" target="_blank"><font color="#0000ff">http://www.insearchoftech.com/</font></a>&nbsp;</strong><font color="#000000">Twitter Handle: @matthewnorwood</font></font></li> <li><font size="3"><strong>Maish Saidel-Keesing, <a href="http://technodrone.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><font color="#0000ff">http://technodrone.blogspot.com/</font></a></strong>&nbsp;<font color="#000000">Twitter Handle: @maishsk</font></font></li> <li><font size="3"><strong>Phillip Sellers, <a href="http://tech.philipsellers.com/" target="_blank"><font color="#0000ff">http://tech.philipsellers.com/</font></a></strong>&nbsp;<font color="#000000">Twitter Handle: @pbsellers</font></font></li> </ul> <p><font size="3" color="#000000">We also have a number of judges.&nbsp; Between your "votes" and the input from the judges, each round will have half of the bloggers go on to the next round until we crown a champion.&nbsp; If those who are "sent home", "chopped", or "fired" get to keep going on as we'll have different prizes for all of the participants.&nbsp; In addition, all of the participants will be coming to VMworld with their travel, hotel and event pass paid for by HP as a thank you for being in the contest - so really everyone wins!</font></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><font size="3" color="#000000">Speaking of the judges, here's who Thomas has:</font></p> <ul> <li><font size="3" color="#000000"><strong>Matt Davis </strong><a href="http://blog.da5is.com/" target="_blank"><font color="#0000ff"><strong>http://blog.da5is.com</strong>/</font></a>&nbsp;<font color="#000000">Twitter Handle: @da5is</font></font></li> <li><font size="3" color="#000000"><strong>John Obeto </strong><a href="http://absolutelywindows.com/" target="_blank"><font color="#0000ff"><strong>http://absolutelywindows.com</strong>/</font></a>&nbsp;<font color="#000000">Twitter Handle: @JohnObeto</font></font></li> <li><font size="3" color="#000000"><font color="#000000"><strong>Stu Miniman </strong></font><strong><a href="http://blogstu.wordpress.com/" target="_blank"><font color="#0000ff">http://blogstu.wordpress.com/</font></a></strong>&nbsp;<font color="#000000">Twitter Handle: @Stu</font></font></li> <li><font size="3" color="#000000"><strong>Sharon Copeland <a href="http://www.wix.com/scopeland40/teckiegirl-website" target="_blank"><font color="#0000ff">http://www.wix.com/scopeland40/teckiegirl-website</font></a></strong>&nbsp;<font color="#000000">Twitter Handle: @TeckieGirl</font></font></li> <li><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3"><strong><font color="#000000">Kristi McDonald </font></strong><font color="#000000">Twitter Handle: @KRISLMC</font></font><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3"><font color="#000000"></font></font></li> </ul> <p><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3"><font color="#000000"></font></font></p> <p><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3"><font color="#000000">We did our first of the three official contest briefings yesterday -&nbsp; \please take some time and visit the websites of the contestants as they start to write about the first briefing on Converged Storage.&nbsp; Since there are a lot of links for you to click on in this post, I'll talk about that in my next post.&nbsp;</font></font></p> <p><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3" color="#000000"><br /><br /></font></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><br /><br /><br /><br />&nbsp;<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p> Thu, 25 Aug 2011 14:48:37 GMT CalvinZ 2011-08-25T14:48:37Z http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Around-the-Storage-Block-Blog/Blog-off-reality-blogger-contest/ba-p/96579 <p>Check out who the bloggers are in our new reality blogger contest.</p> Thu, 25 Aug 2011 14:48:37 GMT http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Around-the-Storage-Block-Blog/Blog-off-reality-blogger-contest/ba-p/96579 CalvinZ 2011-08-25T14:48:37Z http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Around-the-Storage-Block-Blog/Blog-off-reality-blogger-contest/bc-p/96685#M1413 Great site I really like it Fri, 05 Aug 2011 15:47:28 GMT http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Around-the-Storage-Block-Blog/Blog-off-reality-blogger-contest/bc-p/96685#M1413 Mattew 2011-08-05T15:47:28Z