Helping New Bloggers to Break the Ice: A New Ipad Pro for the Author with the Best Article!

Breaking the ice can be tough.  Over the years, many individuals have asked to be given access to the blogging interface only to never post an article.  Maybe they underestimated the time it takes to write a decent article, or maybe they got cold feet. I don't blame or judge them at all - how many times in my life have I had the intention to do something but didn't follow through?  Once, maybe twice 😉 (don't worry if you don't get my sense of humor, you wouldn't be the first).    

Following the last call for bloggers, close to 40 new DSP/Embedded/Electronics/FPGA experts have been granted access to the blogging interface on the *related sites.  So exciting!  But as the saying goes; 

A blogger is not a blogger until a blogger blogs  

So the big question is, how many will end up publishing at least one article?  Only time will tell.  We can only hope that the vast majority will take the plunge so we can pick up their brains and benefit from the generous sharing of their knowledge and experience.  Will a new Jason Sachs, with 73 amazing articles and counting, or a new Rick Lyons, with 49 masterpieces so far, emerge from this group?  Let's cross our fingers.   

In the meantime, in the hope to help the new bloggers break the ice and publish their first article, I will empty my piggy bank, my childrens' piggy banks and sell some of my belongings (ok maybe I am exaggerating a bit) so I can offer a new Ipad Pro (or $800) to the new blogger who will have published 'the best' article before the end of November.  

'The best' article will be chosen by the bloggers themselves.  I will do a survey amongst ALL bloggers (new and old) and the question will be something like: 

Tell me which three articles from the list located at http://.. (I will compile a list of all the articles posted by new bloggers since the call for bloggers has been posted) you think are the best.  

I will leave it to the bloggers to determine what 'the best' means for them.  From my point of view, as the editor of the *related sites, the best articles are usually the ones that:

• are very closely related to the field of the site(s) on which they are published,
• are appealing and understandable to a good proportion of users on the given site(s) because they are well written and structured,
• bonus points for articles that are cool enough to become viral through social networks (twitter, reddit, hackernews) or attract links from other sites (hackaday).   

I will compile the results (one vote one point) and the author of the article with the highest score will get the price.  

One important condition: the article needs to be available only on the *related sites to be eligible.  So no reproduction of an article wrote for a magazine or other website please.  And of course, the article has to be the work of the blogger.  

I probably left a few stones unturned so feel free to get in touch if you can think of a flaw in this 'contest'.  Most of all, we want this to be fun and fair!  At the end of the day, we are all winners every time a great article is published (a bit corny - I know).

And if you are not a blogger yet but would like to join the team, please get in touch and tell me a little about you and what you would like to write about.

Happy blogging!  And thank you very much for being part of this.

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