2nd Place in March VFM Contest

We won 2nd place in the March VFM Contest! Here are the final standings. To everyone who voted - thank you!

We've been told that there isn't going to be another contest until September. However, Instant Blog is still going to be around in the meantime.

Photo credits: original photo by Luis Miguel Munoz-Najar and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution license. Remixed by Patrick.

Responses to Johnny and Amanda

Ok, so Johnny outlined why he's against the Society Development Fund. Last week, I indicated that I'm in favour of the Fund. Here's why: I want to see what the SFSS can do with all that extra money.

Now, I understand the apprehension Johnny may have over dumping $430,000 into a largely undefined "fund". However, I don't think we should have the SFSS continually coming back to the electorate to approve funds for important projects. There are projects, like the renovations to student spaces on campus, that the SFSS is already working on and that should be completed as soon as possible. I'd rather give the SFSS the money and let them do what students elected them to do. I'm willing to give them a chance to impress me.

What if they don't impress? If the SFSS doesn't do well, students only have to wait a year to kick them out. Or depending on the circumstances, students can impeach the whole lot of them. I think recent history has shown that SFU students can effectively hold their student society representatives accountable.

Having said all that, I should mention that I'm no longer a student, so none of that $430,000 will actually be coming out of my wallet. Nevertheless, if I was a student, I'd still support establishing the Fund.



On an entirely unrelated note, I must also respectfully disagree with Amanda Sung's assertion that if this had been a municipal, provincial, or federal election, Xenia would have been labeled indecisive because she is a woman. Yes, I agree that she would have been portrayed as being indecisive. However, she'd be portrayed that way not because she's a woman, but because she in fact reversed her decision about running. She announced that she wasn't running and then changed her mind and entered the race.

I doubt the media would treat Joe Paling any differently if he had done that instead of Xenia. His opponents certainly wouldn't have thought twice about calling him indecisive. If that's what his opponents are focusing on, the media isn't going to overlook it because Joe is a man. Paul Martin and Stephane Dion immediately come to mind as examples. When the federal Conservatives accused Paul Martin of dithering, the media picked it up. More recently, the media has reported on Stephane Dion's seeming indecision over when to bring down the government. I simply can't see the media linking gender with decisive/indecisiveness.

VFM Networking Party

I've been meaning to write something about the Voter-Funded Media Networking Party that was held two weekends ago, but I haven't had a chance to with all the election/referendum activity. Since that's somewhat behind us now, I'll offer my impressions of the party. For anyone who missed it, here's a time-lapse of part of the party.



I was surprised that there weren't more SFU VFM contestants in attendance. In hindsight, I shouldn't have been surprised since it was in the middle of the midterm/finals period.

I was surprised by the political enthusiasm of a lot of the guests. In hindsight, I shouldn't have been surprised since VFM is intended to cover political happenings and the party invitation clearly said that student politicians would be attending. Don't get me wrong, political enthusiasm is great. I think I was surprised because I don't get that same sense of political enthusiasm (and political insider-ness) from reading SFU VFM blogs.

The assortment of food and refreshments was very good.

About a week after the party, I found out that Brad Coleman had attended the party as well. In hindsight, I think I was standing right beside him near the end of the party and didn't realize it. I'm pretty sure it must have been him since I met everyone else at the party. It's too bad I didn't get to meet him since I had been poking fun at him for not posting any content on his blog. I chatted with his friends though and they're very nice people. For the record, Brad has content now.

Speaking of VFM...there are just a few days left to rate the media in this month's VFM contest. If you've got an SFU computing ID and you like Instant Blog, please take a second to vote:

If you've voted in previous months, click here.
If you've never voted before, click here.

SFU VFM So Far

Since Maayan from UBC Insiders reviewed the SFU VFM contest last week, I thought it was about time I offered my perspective as an SFU VFM contestant. For the record, I agree with Maayan's assessment of the contest at SFU. This post may also be timely given Mark Latham's recent proposal to turn UBC's VFM contest into a similar year-round, month-by-month design.

Instant Blog was created to be our entry into the SFU VFM contest. You may have noticed that although VFM is intended to better inform voters, there isn't a lot information being published by the SFU VFM blogs. This might be surprising to some people, especially since the SFSS elections are only five days away. From the perspective of a contestant though, it's not at all surprising.

For the most part, there is a lack of quality content being published. Why? It's simple - you don't need content to win. February's first place winner had one post for the entire month. sfuvfm.blogspot.com has never posted any content, yet has won a total of $70 over two months. What incentive is there to post content, when it has so little to do with reward outcomes?

Right now, rewards are based on ratings from voters, but these ratings (at the moment) are not a particularly good measure of performance. There are so few voters (perhaps because there is little content) that the voting process has been reduced to seeing which contestant can get more of their friends voting for them. As of February 23, 2008, there were only 66 registered voters. By my estimate, 47% of those registered voters are my friends. Without objective voters, ratings will likely not reflect the quality of contestants.

So far it seems that the contest has relied on contestants to promote their blogs and attract new voters. However, judging by the number of registered voters, I think most contestants feel it's more trouble than it's worth to promote beyond their circle of friends. Even within friends and classmates, it's difficult to get the vote out month after month. Despite personally knowing nearly half of all registered voters, I was unable to get enough of them to participate beyond a single month. This was partly because for the most part I didn't try to get them to vote again. I was basically unwilling to spam them with monthly requests to vote in the contest. At least in the short-term, I think the contest needs to move away from relying on contestants to bring in voters.

Overall, contestants are being rewarded for poor performance, there aren't enough voters to make the rating system effective, and contestants are either unable or unwilling to attract more voters. Without much content to attract new objective voters, I think there needs to be a separate incentive for voters. I suggest eliminating the fifth place prize (there are only four active contestants anyway) and redirecting that money towards a prize draw for voters. After rating the contestants, voters can be entered into a fabulous prize draw.

I know it's still early days for the contest, but I thought I should offer my two cents so far.

Fairly Coherent, Fairly Intelligent

It's come to my attention that people are actually reading this blog. In fact, two whole people have even taken time to comment on a couple of our blog entries. This is indeed exciting news as it confirms that we have at least five readers! Amy and Maayan, thanks for your comments.

I think we can all agree that Instant Blog has had remarkable success for a blog that was created in 30 seconds. Even our competitors have high praise for Instant Blog:

"Kudos for the Instant Blog in getting up and running and having some good content right away"
says Xenia Menzies of SFU Politics (also SFSS Presidential candidate)

Elise Ikoma of SFU: Food for Thought exclaims,
"a fairly coherent and promising blog...run by what seem to be two fairly intelligent number geeks"

" "
raves Bradley Coleman of SFU VFM.

Nevertheless, the real proof is in how VFM voters have cast their ballots. Instant Blog finished in first place in January and now has won a very solid second place in February's contest. Thank you to all our supporters!!! We love you!

Congratulations to all the other winners and competitors.

And in case you were wondering...yes, we're competing again in March's contest.

Patrick

PS. Although I think Johnny may be accurately described as a "number geek", I'm much much more of a Star Trek geek than any other breed of geek.

Xenia Menzies Not Running

Sixteen days after launching her SFSS Presidential Exploratory Committee to gather feedback from friends and colleagues, Xenia Menzies announced that she would not be running in this year's SFSS elections.


Xenia made the announcement on Facebook on Monday, February 11. Gradually, news of her decision spread around the globe as her friends and supporters checked for new status updates. Yes, SFU politics are dramatic like that.

Xenia's decision apparently came after much thought and discussion with those around her. I must admit, I was surprised when Xenia asked me for my opinion on the matter a couple weeks ago. Although we've been in the same class and we seem to run into each other with increasing frequency at events around town, we don't know each other well. Maybe she was looking for an objective opinion. At any rate, I noted that she did quite well last year considering she was out of the country on exchange during the campaign. My advice was for her to take a Trudeau-esque "long walk in the snow" to sort things out.


It snowed. Did she take that walk? I don't know. But I do know that according to her message to the Exploratory Committee, she's ready to move on (after previously serving as Business Rep and twice unsuccessfully running for President) and feels that she can give just as much back to the SFU community as an alumnus as she could if she were in student government.

Although she feels the SFSS should be more efficient, less bureaucratic, and more transparent, she believes other candidates could do just as well as she could in bringing about those changes. In her announcement, Xenia was critical of the past two SFSS Presidents for being too far removed from the average student. Apparently concerned that further extending her time at SFU would too remove her from the average student, she decided against running again.


In my experience, Xenia is a great person. I like her. However, in the spirit of competition, I must point out that thanks to our crackerjack team of reporters, Instant Blog is the first VFM blog to break this story, even before Xenia's own VFM blog. Nevertheless, now that she's decided not to run, I have no doubt we'll be reading her take on the elections soon enough.

Patrick


Photos:
"No Running With Fish" by Tristram Brelstaff
"Footsteps" by John Haslam
Both photos used under Creative Commons Attribution license.
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If you're from SFU and found the info on Instant Blog helpful, please take a minute to vote for us.

Thank You!

We did it! Instant Blog claimed first place in January's Voter-Funded Media Contest. To all our supporters - thank you! We couldn't have done it without you...all 33 of you. Hmm...I suppose it's actually 31 when you subtract me and Johnny... at any rate, thanks and we hope you'll rate us well in February's contest.

Congrats also to our competitors in January's contest. CJSF claimed 2nd place, SFU Politics took 3rd, and SFU VFM came in 4th. I think Bradley of SFU VFM deserves special congratulations for winning the 4th prize, considering he had absolutely no blog entries on his blog. That's an impressive ROI if I ever did see one.

Special thanks also to Mark Latham for organizing these monthly VFM contests.

Patrick

Voter-Funded Media (VFM) Contest

We have officially entered the Voter-Funded Media (VFM) Contest at SFU for this month!

What does that mean? That means we are competing with three other blogs to provide information to the SFU community.

How does it work? Anyone with an SFU computing ID and password can rate each of the contestants on a scale of 0 (worst) to 10 (best). Raters may score the blogs according to any judging criteria they choose. The votes are tallied at the end of the month and prizes are awarded to the top 5 competitors.

So if you like Instant Blog, please take a moment to register as a voter and rate us!

For more information on the contest, click here.

Thanks for your support!

Patrick