Get $3,500 in Prizes for Reading USP Journal!

You may know that I’m making the trip over to San Francisco in January to attend the SharePoint Technology Conference. I hope to see many of you there, and I’m definitely going to see one of you.

A lot.

Here’s the deal.

USPJ is sponsoring the event this year as a media sponsor. That means I’m entitled to bring one guest to the conference.

I want my guest to be one of the members of the USP Journal mailing list. And I don’t want this to be just any giveaway. I want you to feel that you are my guest, and I want to take care of you.

So, on January 23, 2010, I’m going to draw one winner out of the proverbial hat who will get a free three-day pass, valued at $1,595.00.

That means you get the full package, including access to workshops, classes, special events, meals, and everything as described on http://sptechcon.com/register_sf.html.

Oh, but don’t think that’s all.

As my guest, of course you will stay at the conference hotel, the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport hotel, for four nights, from February 9 through February 13.

That means you arrive the day prior to the conference and can stay until the day after the conference. This has a value of around $600.00.

I’ll be staying there myself, which brings up the third part of this prize.

Every day of the conference, for one full hour, you get personal training with me, on any topic you choose. If you can’t choose, I have multiple topics I can teach you, both on SP2007 and on SP2010.

You will get this training all three days of the conference plus the day you arrive. If you arrive late, we can do two hours on one of the other days instead.

I’ll even record the session and produce it for you so you get your personal training as a DVD for later use.

I normally charge $300 per hour for such training, so this is valued at $1,200.00.

And, to make sure you get all the current issues and many of the future issues of USPJ, I’m including a 13-issue subscription bundle, valued at $149.50.

The grand prize thus is worth more than $3,500.

Note: I can’t pay for your plane ticket, as I have no idea from where you will be arriving, and that would change the value of the prize depending on where you live.

But I’m not stopping there. Five other winners will also receive a 13-issue subscription bundle, valued at $149.50.

The total amount of prizes is thus valued at more than $4,200.

Here’s what you have to do.

I’m looking for testimonials to put up on the various issue sites. To enter, you need to send me a one-paragraph testimonial about what you think of one of the issues.

Does this means that you need to purchase an issue to participate? No! Why not read through the free Nintex issue, or any of the free preview issues, such as the first issue of the Introducing SharePoint 2010 series. You can even do this for one of the bonus issues available in the free section of the USP website.

Here’s an example (not an actual testimonial):

"Reading SharePoint Designer Workflows really made me understand how to create and work with workflows in SharePoint Designer. The issue was easy to read, and the accompanying videos were very valuable."

Some rules apply, though.

• No purchase is necessary. If you have purchased an issue, feel free to write about that, but if not, simply review any of the free content and tell me what you think. You can check out free previews for all the issues in the menu.
• You cannot get cash instead of the prize. The prize is as it is.
• You must be an actual reader of the issue for which you write your testimonial. This is required by the feds in the United States, and although I’m legally registered in Norway and not subject to U.S. regulations, I still want to play fair.
• You must be a member of the USPJ mailing list. If you are not a member of the mailing list at the time of the drawing (January 23, 2010), you’ll forfeit your contribution.
• You must allow me to post your testimonial along with your first name and either city or country of origin, whether you win or not. (In other words, if you are John Yarkes from the United Kingdom, I’m going to post your testimonial as coming from John, UK.) If required, I may edit the testimonial for clarity but not for meaning.
• You must send your testimonial to me in an email to journal@understandingsharepoint.com bearing a subject containing at least the text "Customer Testimonial: Issue X" (where X is the number of the issue). You may add more, but at least those parts are required.

The winner will be drawn by random from all testimonials posted, so there is absolutely not point in trying to write a nice testimonial to increase your chances. Every testimonial, regardless of quality or content, is eligible for winning.

The randomness will be based on me putting all the names of contributors in an Excel sheet and then using a random number generator (Random() in .NET) to pick one of the numbers in the list.

There are no requirements for quality or anything like that. Simply tell me what you think, and you could be spending a few days in January with some of the world’s greatest SharePoint experts. 

So, don’t just sit there, sign up for the Understanding SharePoint Journal mailing list and write me an email at journal@understandingsharepoint.com with the stated subject, and you could be the grand prize winner.

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