The My Question of the Day blog (well, actually it’s just me, Faydra Deon, since I’m the only one who updates this blog and the prize money’s coming from my bank account; haha) is sponsoring a drawing contest.

Theme: This is what “Hope for Haiti” looks like to me.

Prize: $150 ($50 to the winner and $100 to the winner’s choice of charity and/or charities supporting Haiti relief efforts)

Fee to Enter: None; entry is absolutely free!

Deadline to Enter: All entries must be postmarked by 28 February 2010.

How the Winner is Chosen: All entries will be voted on by visitors to the My Question of the Day blog. The entry with the most votes at the end of the voting period will win the prize; plain and simple!

Voting Period: 01 March – 15 March 2010

Announcement Date of Winner: 19 March 2010

How/What to Enter: There can be only one entry per person, per address.

All types of drawings are acceptable as long as they are original works of the artist. When I say all types, this includes drawings done with computer applications (e.g., Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, etc.) as well as paint/watercolor, pen/pencil, magic markers, crayons, sand, dot-matrix printers, magazine-cut-out collages, whatever. No photographs will be accepted.

The finished product should be no more than 8½”x11″, and all entries must be submitted in physical form, even if they are created with a computer application. I will digitize the physical artwork once I receive it and post it to the blog to be voted on by visitors. If you would like your physical artwork back, you must include a self-addressed, stamped mailer for this purpose. If you do not include a self-addressed, stamped mailer, you will not receive your artwork by return mail, no exceptions.

If you don’t want your artwork bent or folded, it’s your responsibility to make sure to send it in such a way that the shipping agent cannot damage it. If you want it shipped back without being bent or folded, you’ll need to provide shipping materials to that effect.

There is no age minimum or maximum. All artwork will compete on equal footing.

All names should be included on the back of the artwork only. No names should be on the front of artwork.

Include a 3″x5″ card with your contact information (name, mailing address, email address) for notification purposes.

Anyone, anywhere in the world can enter, but the prize money will be paid in U.S. dollars only. If you are an international entrant, please be aware of this and the entry deadline, please.

RESTRICTION(S): There’s only one restriction.

There must be at least two, quality entries for the voting to begin. If there are not at least two, quality entries by 28 February 2010, the entire $150 will be donated to the charity/charities of my choice, no exceptions.

Send entries to:

FAYDRA D. FIELDS
ATTN: MYQOTD DRAWING CONTEST
1966 DANIEL STUART SQUARE #111
WOODBRIDGE, VA 22191

If you have questions, comments and/or concerns, please add it/them in the comments on this post, so that everyone can see what questions/comments/concerns have been posed and addressed.

Rules are subject to change without prior notice. Please check back for updates.

If you’re entering the contest or not, visit the “Help for Haiti” page on this blog to see what charities are accepting donations for Haiti relief.

Haiti is going to need our help for a long time to come, so keep that in mind as the days and months, and even years, go by and you are looking for a worthy cause to which to donate.

Have you ever been told it’s rude to enter a room and not speak to the person or people who are already there?

I have, because I used to be really bad about that.

Apparently, I’ve now gotten it right in real life, but I’ve forgotten my manners in the Twitterverse.

Bear with me. I’m going somewhere with this…

This weekend, I spent several hours, going one-by-one through over 6,000 Twitter accounts.

I started this process because someone with whom I’ve been tweeting for a long time brought it to my attention that I wasn’t following him. I was dumbfounded when I realized that I’d overlooked him, so I wanted to see how many other people I’d overlooked. I found about 20 accounts that I wanted to follow; people who’ve been tweeting back and forth with me a months and I wasn’t following them but they were following me. Not cool (in my book).

Once I finished that process, I decided to totally clean up my Twitter account. When it was all said and done, I had unfollowed close to 2,000 accounts that add no value to my Twitter experience. I define accounts that add no value to my Twitter experience as follows:

• accounts that weren’t following me, so that we could interact and engage
• accounts that haven’t been updated in almost a year
• accounts with zero updates
• accounts with very few updates, no avatar and no bio
• accounts of one-way tweeters (accounts that tweet information to but don’t tweet with anyone)

The reason I had so many accounts to unfollow is my own fault. In the quest to connect with more users who interact and engage, I followed these accounts hoping they’d follow back and we could strike up some conversations. I didn’t know if the accounts had humans on the other end or if they were simply spammers. The fact that I never interacted with them leads me to believe a tremendous portion were simply spammers, but maybe many of them were other humans who didn’t know if I was a spammer. After all, I followed them and didn’t initiate any kind of conversation.

If I was hunting for human interaction, and they were hunting for human interaction, and I didn’t identify myself as human, why would they follow back and/or strike up a conversation with me?

Now that I’ve cleaned up my account, I’m going to make some changes in the way I attempt to connect with other humans on Twitter. If I want to know if they’re humans, maybe I should let them know I’m a human first. To this end, from now on, when I follow an account, I’m going to introduce myself.

There’s a possibility I’ll end up following accounts I just recently deleted, but the difference will be that I’ll introduce myself first, to let them know I’m human, and try to strike up a Twitter conversation. If this is possible, I’ll keep following. If I get no response after a week, I’ll unfollow and move on.

It goes back to what I’ve learned for real life.

When you enter someone’s world, you speak first. That’s good manners. That’s polite. The rules don’t change because the room is in cyberspace.

My Question of the Day: You decided to move back to your hometown after being gone for over 20 years. You’ve relocated yourself and your successful business at the same time. You’re looking for local people to employee, and you conduct several interviews. The best candidate for one of the positions which you’re trying to fill is the child of the very person who tormented you from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade; a person you still despise to this day because s/he was relentless in making every minute of your school life beyond miserable. What do you do?

RULES FOR COMMENTS

1. DO NOT include links in your post. There is a place for you to include one link when you’re filling out the Name/Email/Website information. Comments that include links will be deleted.

2. If your post is obviously irrelevant to the question at hand, it will be deleted. This is a tactic spammers use to simply show up on blogs.

3. Please keep your comments respectful. We can agree to disagree without attacking each other.

FYI: You may edit your comment for up to 30 minutes after posting. After 30 minutes, your comment can no longer be revised.