HP star wars fun side challenge

I missed the deadline on this one :( just did my creatve take on Star Wars in a fashion post. Wish I'd done it sooner! 

It's sad that some entries are by people who probably haven't even watched the movies :( hope at least a proper Star Wars fan wins.

Nandini : I dont understand what's sad if people posted an entry without watching the 7 parts. All you need to know is to understand the HP laptop, its command centre features, what all star wars characters are there and how best you can creatively show it . Atleast they posted before deadline

IB basically says "tell us what aspects of the HP Star Wars Special Edition Notebook inspires you and how it can bring out your fun side" only beside "thought starters examples" given. It is not necessary or mandatory that one has to watch the Star Wars movies / serial or latest one to blog about it. If anyone watched that movie and done creative works then it is an added advantage just, that's it.

Guess you are a recent member of IB. Bloggers who are single here have attempted to write about parenting, bloggers who cant even make coffee have attempted receipe contests and tech illiterates participate in gadget contests.

As Karthick and HR pointed, the creativity that one can bring to address the contest requirements, matters. 

Bloggers who are single here have attempted to write about parenting, bloggers who cant even make coffee have attempted receipe contests and tech illiterates participate in gadget contests.

Humorous, yet accurate. No wonder you keep winning contests, Nandini. 

Nandini Chandrasekaran : +100

@Nandini S  : When you are new to a forum , you need to understand how it works, and try to get a holistic view . Rather than complaining about missing deadline and saying others have completed. Thats nt a good thing to start with. I also observed that you have continued that complaining trend by creating a new thread saying "Mediocre posts are getting more votes but some good posts are not getting any" 

Winning and losing is a part of the game. Accept defeat once in a while and try to win the next time , rather than complain about others or being jealous to put it mildly

Wearing cynicism like a badge of honour does not augur well when we are in a forum of thoughts that are absolutely free and questioning and observing what is good or bad is one's own perception and need not necessarily reflect on the general mood. 

I see a lot of people taking shots at @Nandini Swaminathan when she said "some entries are by people who probably haven't even watched the movies". I think what she meant is many entries are by people who know nothing about Star Wars and are just putting up a blog post for the competition and the prizes. I for one believe that If HP has undertaken a partnership with Star Wars franchise, it would be definitely to capture the audience who are into it and also to project a "common harmony" that comes with what Star Wars franchise represents. Please do note that it is given in the conditions "CONTEST WILL BE JUDGED BASED ON 'RELEVANCE' AND ORIGINALITY". Keyword is RELEVANCE. So of course if you are doing a piece on Star Wars and you start writing about teletubbies holding light-sabres, it don't count for much, howsoever amazing the creativity-quotient be. So , yes , she has a point. In fact if HP ends up choosing such post as the winner, it sure might signify that they had a partnership with Star Wars franchise without having any consideration for what it actually signifies, but only to get publicity because Star Wars is in fame right now. It would mean they have nothing to do with star-wars but with the audience that is taking note of it. And for people who keep telling her "you are new here" and that they know better, and that complaining or pointing to some issue is downright sacrilege and shows jealousy or narcissm, well, last I checked this was a free country. Imagine the irony that the people who are accusing her of sharing her thoughts openly are the same people who demand "creative freedom" to put a blogpost on Star Wars with absolutely no relevance to it, and being completely ignorant about it.  Purely my personal opinion though.

I think the Teletubby holding light sabres will boost up marketing, given that Star Wars has had its reach from movie theatres to HP Laptops tieup till Teletubbies. So yes thats a good post and very much relevant. Additionally a blogger having a good ranking score linking their page to HP star wars page is enough to generate awareness and sales

This is exactly what I'm talking about.  If this is all about marketing then the prize will go to the blogger who has maximum views or votes in their indivine post.  Why even talk about creative freedom then? What's the point? This is why many a times people win prize here even though there is a lot of inconsistencies in their post and the rules and regulations that were defined.  Even in #madeofgreat competition, though it was mentioned to write about someone "you know personally", the winning post was talking about people the author has no personal association with whatsoever.  My apologies to bring a different context here but I for one do believe that there is a distinct problem here in this community, where marketing dividend gets priority over  creativity and relevance.  What is the point of talking about relevance if teletubbies are gonna be used as props for star wars.  

And thank you, Sameer, for understanding the gist of what I said. 

@Nandini S:  you're welcome. I'm just putting forth my opinion here and I don't want anyone to think I'm trying to flame the debate. 

Btw Nandini Swaminathan's intention is not necessarily restricted to winning a HP contest but rather she's trying to get bloggers for her own company through INdiblogger. That's why her post is all about

saying "Mediocre" blog posts are getting votes but not good ones and so on. She has very much admitted to that and I highly doubt she's in IB purely for the joy of blogging.

Addiitonally : We are not taking shots at her. we are replying to her when she remarks mediocre posts are getting a prize or that she feels "SAD" that people who havent seen the movie are actually contributng to contests . Why would she need to even worry or care about others who are submitting. That doesnt promote a healthy blogging atmosphere in this community

Ok I really don't feel welcome here now, I didn't follow this thread later, then it popped up and I see everyone trying to target me just for expressing an opinion. 

I do have my own fashion & lifestyle blog here. At my company we are already working with bloggers. I had merely mentioned that I work with bloggers as part of my full-time job though that was in another thread. I hope you're not getting confused. Anyway, I've learned my lesson. I won't post any criticism here again because apparently everything is 100% perfect and no one is allowed to make observations. Yes, I feel sad when people do not understand the Star Wars universe and then attempt to write fan fiction on it. As a fan, I think I can at least expect people who have watched something to write even remotely accurate fan fiction on it. Peace out.

Guys, keep it clean. Moderator's request. Don't discourage others just to get an upper hand in a forum debate. That's a low-blow. An experienced forum member of all people should know that. 

I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts too and fight for freedom of speech everywhere

But when you begin to say most of the blog posts are mediocre and its gaining a lot of votes, that's something you cant say unless the blogger explicity requests you to review the same

So if its a discussion of the contests and its rules I am totally game for it. But when you begin to question , why is he or she posting for a Star Wars contest thats not right

And again, I have abs no intention to target someone nor being cynical abt anyone.

I never said all the posts are mediocre, as I've come across some truly amazing blogs here and I've also expressed my love for those posts that I read on another thread.

Again not sure how you got ALL OF THE ABOVE long winded paragraphs of interpretation from my comment which was, funnily enough, literally one sentence in the original post on this thread. Thank you Sameer, for pointing this out. In addition, I have no personal grudges against anyone in this world, nor have I gotten personal anywhere so it would be nice if the same was followed towards me as well. Again, peace to everyone.

Guys, read the sentence properly. It says, "some are mediocre'. How is it wrong? How is it even offensive? She's just putting a point forward that some posts are meh. And she said she hopes a star wars fan win. What's wrong with that, too? These are all contests. Rather than feeling 'on edge' and all, the point is to have fun. Besides, one of the terms is that it needs to be relevant. So Star Wars fans have a feather in a cap unless they can't make something creative. Of course, someone who researches on Star Wars will also have the same advantage. After all, Star Wars storyline is just predictable and simple compared to Star Trek (Roddenberry, not the silly JJ Abrams lens flare alternate universe). Boy, if few are reacting this way just because someone called 'some posts are mediocre', I can't wait to see the reaction that people have when 'some' don't win and someone who may have made a good/relevant/original attempt wins.  

 The above discussion is a classic example of the true spirit of IB forums. That says how welcome you are here  Welcome to the forum Nandini!

I liked reading your opinion Nandini, an outspoken person like you is needed to make IB even better. Welcome to the Forum, too.

any idea when the results will be declared? estimates? 

Indi team plz tell us when the result will be declared.... ?????

the number of entries of the contest used to show as 141.. now it is showing as 139 .. why ? ... 

Someone's profile was probably deactivated for some reason or the other!

The wait is long on this one!

Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future...

Yahoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo :D

Congrats on a wonderful win!

in my personal opinion, once again,  marketing quotient and number of views or reach garnered has become the main criteria of winnings and not the relevance. I've seen so many better posts, which actually talk about what was asked in the first place " how the laptop can bring out your fun side" .. as in what all creative stuff can be done with it.. and not about simply talking about star wars movie characters, or describing what the laptop possesses. 

The top three entries have only 18, 4 and 2 votes. Not many people viewed those entries.

IndiVotes is not an indication of the popularity of any article.

What I meant to say, Ankit, is that the article may not have won due to the number of votes or views, but due to other merit. I hope you're not misunderstanding my view.

I'm not talking about the indivine votes. that anyway don't matter as is given in the regulation. I'm talking about the reach of the blog sites. the point i'm trying to make is any novice blogger with not a lot of reach in his blog site, but with a very creative and relevant blog piece will be given less preference as compared to a blog piece from a professional blogger,  which might clearly not be as good, but since her/his blogsite garners a lot of reach (due to it being a professional blog or well viewed blog site). This is the case i've been seeing in many competitions here. If they wanted to make "reach" of the blog site a criteria, they should have mentioned explicitly. 

REMINDER TO IB ABOUT LONG-PENDING REQUEST ON CONTEST THREAD - LET COMPANIES BE UPFRONT ABOUT WHAT THEY WANT INSTEAD OF ALWAYS SAYING FUN AND CREATIVITY

Well, I think that it would be really great if some other things would be more explicit. For instance, I did not have the skill to understand that the article should be realistic and not just creative. This is partly because it was mentioned, what "fun" things would you do? This is something we oldies have talked about on the contest thread again and again. 

I would like to request IB once more to make the instructions a bit clearer. I mean HP needs to explicitly say that hey, we are coming up with this product, we want you bloggers to help boost sales. What do you think the common man would do if he were to buy our lappie? Why is this still not being done, IB? Not all of us are advertising geniuses? And if you think it looks bad or greedy for HP or other sponsors to say this, believe me, it looks MUCH MORE greedy and dishonest when HP and other sponsors do the very thing they find it so shameful to say.

At the end, I am happy that content with just two votes is winning a major prize because we cribbed a lot earlier that only entries with votes and comments were winning and you, IB set that COMPLETELY right, so thanks a TON. Now just resolve this honesty issue please. Anyway the motives are clear and not at all wrong business-wise, what is wrong is pretending ONLY creativity matters when what matters has to be guessed by advertising brains not all of us have. Why not ask sponsors to be direct. What is wrong in wanting to sell laptops? When will you rectify this, IB? The others, please do not think I'm talking about the judging, the judging's been quite OK. I'm talking about INSTRUCTIONS at the BEGINNING of the contest, long before the judging, and we have repeatedly talked to IB about this in the past, just bringing it up at a relevant timer. 

Congrats Winners! :)

Congrats winners. Swapnil, I see you've won a voucher. And thanks IB & HP!

Congratulations to all the winners! Well deserved :)