iPod Giveaway #7: We Have a Winner

After several days of deliberating, I’m proud to announce that the winner of the Steve Jobs Movie Poster competition is Sean Liew with his exquisite entry “Enemy of the Gates”. Sean’s entry not only showed excellent photo composition skills but unmatched attention to detail as well. There were funnier entries, edgier entries, and more time-consuming entries, but none put it all together like Enemy of the Gates, and that is why Sean is now the proud owner of a new 1 gigabyte iPod Shuffle.

  • Honorable mention – humor: “iTrip” and “Dude, Where’s My iPod”, “The Big Woznowski”
  • Honorable mention – photo composition: “American History”, “Adaption”, “Nightmare on Pod Street”
  • Honorable mention – concept: “Being Steve Jobs”, “Lord of Apple”, “i, Pod”

Below is a slideshow of the top 40 entries. By the way, apologies to any contestant whose bandwidth limit was exceeded by this contest. What can I say? You might want to look into Dreamhost:

Sweet slideshow component made with SlideShowPro

So that’s the end of the Mike Industries iPod Creativity competitions… for awhile at least. They’ve all been extremely fun, but the time associated with setting them up, managing them, and picking winners is more than I can spare right now. Maybe in a few months, they’ll be back. Until then, thanks to everyone who has participated.

92 comments on “iPod Giveaway #7: We Have a Winner”. Leave your own?
  1. Daniel Foley says:

    I’m not disappointed. #8 out of all of those is pretty good. I think everyone did a great job too.

  2. Chad Edge says:

    20th place!

    That’s right, baby. Not a bad position for a couple minutes work as a joke. Wow.

    Add that to my resume…

  3. Collin says:

    I’m pretty sure my entry was number 41! Congrats Sean, I was sure one of your entries would be the winner. It is one of my all time favorite movies So now I’ll be picturing The SV Pirates at the end of the scope. :-)

  4. Meurglys says:

    Thanks for the honorable mention of my “Nightmare” and a bow to Sean Lieuw who absolutely deserves his shiny new iPod. Nice work and great idea. I would have picked that one too. :)
    I really enjoyed this competition and will certainly be around for the next one! :)

  5. No taste ;)

    Just kidding – good on ya Sean, you really deserved it.

  6. Daniel David says:

    Congratulations to Sean and all the other entrants. This was the first Mike Industries contest I entered and it was great fun… I hope they are back before long.

  7. Don says:

    sigh … I kept hoping that we might have a contest more up my alley … and now before that happened, they are over … is there any justice in this world?

  8. Mike Mella says:

    Yes, well done Sean. …Your works appeared to be the clear favourites for a while now.

    It’s a shame Mike’s too busy to start another contest. Maybe someone else should? Or maybe we all can — We start a contest, each entry costs a dollar which will go toward a “buy an iPod fund”, we vote for the winner, winner gets the iPod. Whatever’s left over in the pot carries over to the next one??

    Hmm…

  9. nice work to everyone, and I hope all had a good time … i know i did.

  10. Jared Lyon says:

    Just a little nitpick, Mike, but your original post states that the winning entry is called “Enemy of the Gates,” but the poster art clearly states “Enemy of Bill Gates.”

  11. Mike C. says:

    Thanks for the contest Mike.
    Congrats to Sean Liew. He was the clear winner IMO.
    I got 14th place for Ace Ventura (Apple Venture) and had a blast doing it.
    I would love to participate in any future contests.
    Do we know if Steve Jobs ever saw these?

  12. dave says:

    Congrats really good entry that won!

  13. Mike B says:

    Great Job…..it was nice to see my idea be chosen and the results are quite impressive. Very fun to gaze through these.

    Mike Mella has a good idea to keep these going. A nice little photoshop for an ipod contest at 1 dollar per entry. I’d be in on it. Heck I’ll even help host it if anyone else would have interest.

    I’ll miss the competitions not being held here for awhile but mike has a good reason. Newsvine is looking better each day!

    anyways congrats to Sean…..excelent work!

  14. Derek Cooper says:

    Congratz!

  15. Mile J. says:

    Congratulations, Sean.
    (I’m happy with my #34 :))

  16. Sean Liew says:

    I’m honored. Thanks for all your support and Mike D for organizing this contest. It’s been really fun doing the posters and looking at all the creative entries. My personal favourites are (in no order) iPod Father, Finding iPod, Lord of the iPods and Dude, Where’s My Pod. Great work everyone.

  17. Veracon says:

    I’m honoured to be in the top 40 (#13 to be exact). Was fun to give it a try!

  18. Anthony says:

    I’m very surprised that the guys who do the Joy of Tech didn’t hear about it in time. They’ve done numerous “movie poster” designs. The funniest to me was their “OS That Would Not Die” poster.
    (http://www.joyoftech.com/joyoftech/joyimages/333.gif)

    They also had a great Planet of the Apes parody as well.
    http://www.joyoftech.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/001_300/217.html

    Anthony

  19. Patrick says:

    Can we get a link to download a zip file with all of these entries? It’d make a great screen saver!

  20. Jeff L says:

    Disappointed my “iMile” entry didn’t make the top 40 but congrats to Sean he definitely deserved the win!

  21. Steve says:

    These were truely impressive –

  22. I’m honored to have recieved an honorable mention for “The Big Woznowski” and I was pleased to see that my Beetles parody had also made it into the top 40. I’m surprised I was the only person to use Ellen Feiss in an entry (and it wasn’t even my good entry).

  23. After thinking for a bit, I’d be willing to host a contest like the one that Mike B. proposed in post #13.

    If anybody’s interested, email me at lostrambler -a-t- gmail.com and we can work something out.

  24. Sandra Mause says:

    @ Brian Flanagan and Mike B.

    Nice idea to run a contest on our own. All it needs is some webspace and a Paypal account for the $1 entry fee. :)

  25. Mike Mella says:

    Yes – our own contest – let’s do it.

  26. So, I have a blog at pushnshove.com that could definitely do the hosting. I think we need to work out whether it will be public voting, a judge or a panel of judges. I’d prefer the latter (3 or so judges) because while public would be nice, it is too hard to fraud.

  27. So, I have a blog at pushnshove.com that could definitely do the hosting. I think we need to work out whether it will be public voting, a judge or a panel of judges. I’d prefer the latter (3 or so judges) because while public would be nice, it is too hard to fraud.

  28. Mike Mella says:

    Yes, we would have to appoint judges so the votes aren’t biased.

    Not sure who we could get. Maybe different judges for each contest? Invite a different Web-present personality like Mike Davidson, Kevin Rose, Ricky Gervais (!)…whomever…to be a sit-in guest-judge each round?

    If our contest gets as much press as Mike’s has, surely that wouldn’t be too tough.

  29. The problem is getting that publicity. Should we perhaps set up a new blog specifically for the contest?

    http://www.pushnshove.com/contest

    http://contest.pushnshove.com

    something like that?

  30. Mike B says:

    Hey guys can I get in on this project too!!! Sounds incredibly fun and should be able to take off very fast. I could host it as well but seems brian already took the offer.

    I’m willing to help out in any way. Maybe we all could chip in in a little investment. Kinda like a side project for us all…..maybe get it its own domain possibly…..

    however for the overall system we should probably start a paypal like entry scheme taking donations and displaying overall funds and depending on how much money from entries are received the prizes are chosen.

    Anyways drop me an email …Mike B.

    as for publicity I think it is possible to submit it to ilounge.com or other blogs to pull in people.

  31. Mike Mella says:

    Yes, a real domain name would be nice. Hell, we should set it up through Dreamhost.

    Is anyone involved a programmer who can set up all this money tracking business? I’m a Web Developer myself, so design is more my forte.

  32. Mike C. says:

    Maybe we could find a sponsor to donate a prize of some sort in exchange for a banner ad. That way nobody has to shell out any money. Just a thought.

  33. Mike Mella says:

    Good call Mike C.
    …Or if not donate the prize, just let advertisers pay for it.

  34. Sandra Mause says:

    So what do you think, shall we a) play it safe and find sponsors or advertisers to finance the contest or b) take the risk and try something new and go for Mike B.’s original idea to have everyone contribute a small entry fee to buy something cool to crown the best of all the competitors?
    I’d go for the original plan. And if it’s just to find out if it works. But either way I’d be happy to help. :)
    What do you think, Mike, Mike, Mike & Brian?
    Any more Mikes here to join us? ;)

  35. All very good ideas. I’m down for getting a new domain, though perhaps we should try it once on contest.pushnshove.com as a trial run. The sponsor is a good idea, though I think a trial run would benefit that too. If we pay for the first contest and bring in lots of publicity and entries, a sponsor would be much more willing, I think.

    I think for this trial contest we should go as simple as possible.

    * Set up a blog at contest.pushnshove.com
    * A few of us pitch in to get an iPod (shouldn’t be too expensive)
    * Post contest (we need an idea, also)
    * Publicity, Publicity, Publicity
    * Select a winner (using a judge–one of us, perhaps)

    If that goes well, then another contest at a new domain and with a sponsor could follow.

    I think perhaps we should divvy up the work. I’d like to be host/web-designer. Would somebody like to be publicist or judge?

  36. I forgot to say that I think the entry fee perhaps isn’t a great idea for the first time because people may not be too trusting of our contest until it is more established.

  37. Mike Mella says:

    I figure we might as well start it out with whatever’s easiest, which I think would be the sponsor method. Then again, since this would be the first installment of the contest, maybe that wouldn’t be so easy yet.

    I wonder if Mike and the crew at Newsvine would be interested in being our first sponsors??

    At any rate, I’d be down with either method as well.

  38. Sandra Mause says:

    OK, Brian, you’re right, let’s do a trial run as you suggest. :)
    While worldwide publicity is too much for one person to handle I could certainly start out on my home territory (Germany) and email the on- and offline media, as well as post to all sorts of forums. In this context we need to decide about a time frame (does it make sense to contact print media?)
    I can also collect incoming ideas for the contest via email and set up a poll (that you can integrate into your subdomain) to find out which one the public wants to see. Might also come up with one or two ideas of my own. :)

  39. Sandra Mause says:

    PS: I can also host the images, in case your hosting plan can’t handle it alone, Brian. Cause the image-links in the Steve Jobs competition didn’t really work for everyone, and I guess not all contestants’ 1&1 web plans can handle the traffic generated by a contest like Mike Davidson’s… ;)

  40. Righto, I’ll get to work on setting up the subdomain. Once that’s ready, we’ll start taking submissions for contest ideas. I figure I can probably get the site done this weekend, at least in a preliminary way. After that, is 1.5 weeks of suggestions long enough? That would hopefully leave us with a contest starting on the saturday, February 11th. How does that sound?

  41. Sandra Mause says:

    Sounds good to me. :)
    meurglys -a-t- gmail.com for contest idea submissions, and I’ll set up the poll then. :)
    My husband progged a rather nifty professional poll/quiz tool that we can use for free. :)
    We’re 5 people so far. I think two more wouldn’t hurt when it comes to promoting the competition and chipping in for the prize… anyone? :)

  42. Sandra Mause says:

    Is this gonna be a graphics contest? Or do we accept all sorts of ideas?

  43. I think anything that’ll be a fun contest. Why limit it? I’d prefer graphics, but we’ll “let the people decide.”

  44. Mike B says:

    Wow this is really taking off!!! Awesome!

    I can work on publicity for it and dispatching emails to blogs (ilounge, etc.) once it is up and running. I’ll try to find a sponsor as well.

    As for pitching in some cash to get it going I’m perfectly fine with doing so (reasonably of course). I’d also love to help judge but I think that is a collaborative task that we as a group can take on.

    I’m open to take on any other tasks that are out there. I have expierience with websites and more….so if something needs to be done send it my way— Mike B.

  45. Mike B says:

    hey this just hit me for a contest idea…..just an idea and everythingand i know a submission system is being put into place but…..

    what about a photoshop contest of the newly redesigned Disney corporation/theme parks.

    Basically what will happen (in a radical sense) to everyones favorite theme park as Disney buys Pixar and jobs moves in as the biggest shareholder.

    Just an idea but maybe it could get the ball rolling and it plays off of recent events.

  46. When I set the website up this weekend, I’ll email all of you about purchasing the iPod, contest rules, scheduling, etc.

    I’m excited.

  47. Mike Mella says:

    I certainly think we should accept non-graphics ideas. Not everyone is a designer, but everyone has imagination, and the more exposure the better.

    We’ll also have to be aware of time limits (for competition ideas, for entry submissions…) so we don’t get over-inundated…especially when this starts to take off. Perhaps we’ll play it by ear for the first round.

    Maybe for the first contest, the five of us can be the judges. Like one of us picks the top five entries, then the five of us put those in order of worst to best (1-5), add up the totals, and the entry with the highest total wins? …Just a thought.

    So I guess this open to anyone anywhere, eh? Sandra’s in Germany…Where are the rest of you guys located? I’m in Ontario, Canada.

  48. I’m in New York State (near Poughkeepsie)

  49. Mike B says:

    I live in Connecticut (USA)

  50. Sandra Mause says:

    We certainly don’t need an all too tight schedule, but of course when we email the zines and post to blogs and forums we will have to tell them something other than: the contest begins “sometime soon” and runs for “a while”. ;)
    I love the theme park idea. Leaves much room for non-graphics entries . :)

  51. Mike C. says:

    I’m in Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia.

    I will go along with whatever is decided but I think it should be a design/concept contest much like the Steve Jobs poster contest. So what if you’re not very good with Photoshop, it’s the concept that should be judged, not necessarily the artwork. Just my opinion.

    The movie poster idea was great because resource images were pretty easy to find on the web.

    How about some kind of political satire? Maybe simply change Steve Jobs to a George Bush movie poster. Oh, the possiblities.

    When the site is ready I can post links on Tribe.net and that should bring quite a few people to the party. I will also approach Tribe.net as a possible sponsor.

    If we don’t go with a sponsor I will contribute a portion for the prize.
    Thanks all, this is cool.
    Mike C.

  52. Mike Mella says:

    The design stuff does seems to attract plenty of people. And I’d certainly like to steer clear of the Steve Jobs/iPod topics for a while. There’s no shortage of great ideas for competitions even when focusing on design (see Something Awful’s Animal Anomalies).

    I’ll post a notice of the contest on my band’s site and wherever else I think of.

    I’m down with the prize contribution too, though it’d be nice to keep costs to a minimum if it’s just the five of us contributing.

    I think it’s pretty cool that we’re putting this together never having even met. That alone makes a great story for the media…ingenuity of the Web and all that crap.

  53. Sandra Mause says:

    OK, here’s my first topic submission:
    I came up with it when I read the news that Google are actually censoring their Chinese site, following Yahoo’s and MSN’s example.
    So how about “Censorship on the Web” for a competition topic? It will allow a wide variety of approaches, from funny over sarcastic to dead serious, we would have more than enough material available, and last but not least, we would certainly get a lot of attention as the topic is widely discussed and of personal interest to everyone on the web.

  54. Sandra Mause says:

    @ Mike Mella: Yes, we seem to have the web spirit. :)

  55. Sandra Mause says:

    As far as format goes, personally I prefer graphics competitions. But then again I would love to read that limerick on “30,000 Chinese web inspectors” too. ;)

  56. Mike Mella says:

    I think the haiku ones are interesting. Not that I’d like to do that necessarily.

    Davidson’s had some nice non-graphical contest ideas — Name That Tune, Best Website I’ve Never Seen…

  57. Fred says:

    I liked the “Best website I’ve never seen” when Mike D. had that going. Found some really cool websites I would not have found otherwise.

  58. Sandra Mause says:

    Just a thought: As soon as Brian’s done setting up the contest website, shall we set up an IRC chan & meeting to discuss the details live?

  59. Sandra Mause says:

    I agree with Mike Mella that graphics will attract the most people. So I wouldn’t opt for a pure non-graphics competition. But if someone loves to express their thoughts in pottery – why not? ;)

  60. Mella says:

    We could try, although I can’t guarantee my availability.

    We should at least move this discussion outside of Davidson’s forum.

  61. Sandra Mause says:

    Yes, that’s what I was aiming at. Then again, Mike Davidson inspired this entire thing. If this was my blog, I would certainly enjoy this discussion. But we don’t know what he thinks. So, what do you think, Mike Davidson? Shall we leave or keep discussing here on your site? :)

  62. Sandra Mause says:

    Here’s another one:
    Paint the nerdiest easter egg. :D

  63. Mike B says:

    yeah a new means of communications would probably be nice. Although it is kinda amusing to see this build in his blog; I think a better form would be through aim or google talk etc. The IRC sounds good too.

    I am curious as to what Mike D. thinks of this too? Hope he doesn’t get mad or anything.

  64. Mike D. says:

    Haha, no, of course I wouldn’t be mad. I think it’s great. I do, however, get an e-mail every time a comment is posted to my blog so yeeeeeeeeah, lots of little e-mail pings today. :)

  65. Mike Mella says:

    Yeah, I wondered that too. I even thought we might consider putting a shout-out to him in our version – just to pay homage – in some kind of “About this site” page.

  66. Sandra Mause says:

    Thanks, Mike Davidson. You rock! :)
    And sorry about the pings. ;)

  67. Sandra Mause says:

    I do think we should “move out” though, as soon as we have our own site, and link back to this thread and give credits to Mike D. for inspiration and all.
    Oh and how about trying to get Sean Liew for the jury? Can’t imagine a better judge than the winner of the last contest. :)

  68. Mike Mella says:

    Good ask, Sandra. Getting Sean would be a nice gesture.

    The only thing about getting a “civilian” judge whom no one knows is that it wouldn’t be too tough for that person to submit an entry himself under a fake name, then declare himself the winner. That’s why I was thinking that if we got an established industry person, we could at least assume he has better things to do with his time than hack a contest like this.

    Not that Sean would actually do that – I’m sure he’s a stand up guy. Besides, he already won an iPod, didn’t he? ;)

  69. Sandra Mause says:

    Yep. How stupid would he look with TWO iPods around his neck? ;)
    No, seriously, I think we should have a jury consisting of the five of us plus one, e.g. the winner of the last contest.
    Not because I wouldn’t trust one person alone, but simply to avoid making it the matter of personal taste of just one of us. And Sean has proved he does have skills, so I bet he’d be a good judge too. :)

  70. Mike Mella says:

    Okay, I’m cool with that.

  71. Sandra Mause says:

    I’d like to add that I wouldn’t trust most of the established industry people much further than I would trust the next guy. Otherwise I’d pretty soon come up with conspiracy theories like, all Mikes here are in fact one and the same person – although admittedly with very poor imagination as far as pseudonyms go. ;)

  72. Sandra Mause says:

    A good night ping from Germany! Thanks to everyone so far, haven’t had that much fun online in a while. We’re gonna rock the house! :)

  73. It must have been tough – there were a lot of fantastic entries!! Will be watching out for the next comp so I can get it together in time to enter! ;)

  74. Sandra Mause says:

    Ping :)
    Just a quick update to announce that the polling system is ready to go, so, as far as I’m concerened we can officially start collecting ideas now. :)
    We have options to ask people questions too, like, where did you hear about the contest, where are you from, and so on. But I think answering them should be voluntary. Would be interesting to export the submissions to a pie diagram to put up on the contest site too, what do you think?. :)
    @ Brian: As soon as you know what the contest site will look like let me know, so I can match the poll visually. Also, you can either integrate is as pop-up or i-frame. In case of i-frame I need to know the size. :)

  75. Mike Mella says:

    Pie chart = cool with me. Could help to make the site look more professional.

    I’d go with the iFrame, personally.

  76. Sandra Mause says:

    Yes. But not only to make it look more professional. A few statistics are certainly also nice to find sponsors. And it’s interesting for us to see where people heard about the contest so that next time around we don’t have to spam all of the media again. :)

  77. Jay Rosen says:

    not the most original idea.

    check out: http://www.worth1000.com/entries/27000/27080_w.jpg

  78. For the contest, I just started the website and am wondering if it is acceptable to call this the “PushNShove iPod Creativity Contest.” I know that’s kind of self-serving, but it needs a name (the iPod Creativity Contest is somewhat generic) and that seems the most appropriate. It would also give me an easy way to “theme” the website (I’m have some designer’s block as to what the theme of an iPod contest site should look like). If it’s not okay with you guys, I completely understand.

  79. Sandra Mause says:

    You initiated it, you’re hosting it – I don’t see why it shouldn’t bear your name. :)
    If there will be any follow-ups we can still try and find another name.

  80. Mike, Mike, Mike & Sandra, will you all email me at lostrambler – a – t – gmail.com.

    Danka,
    Brian

  81. Mike Mella says:

    At any rate, to tell you the truth, in the event that this thing takes off, I could benefit from my company ZenBug having its name on this contest as well. I figured we’d all be thinking that way, and so since we can’t all have our names on it, probably none of us should.?

    I was thinking that instead, we could just have all the info about the five of us with links or whatever on an About page in the site.

    Just my two cents.

  82. In the event that this takes off, the next contest will be on a new domain with none of our names on it. That being said, if this does take off, I’m going to be paying for the extra bandwidth this time around.

    And yes, I think we should little blurbs or at least links for all of us. Perhaps put each of our sites in a “Sponsors” column on the sidebar?

  83. Mike B says:

    i like the about page. Good Idea……and in the event of it taking off are we gonna consider placing ads on the site. Maybe it;d be able to generate enough revenue to sustain the cost of ipod prizes and then it’d be perfectly free with no submission fees…..if that is still in plan to happen.

  84. We could do that. I already have an account with google ads. I can put it on the main page and track revenue from that page specifically. The problem with Google Ads is that it pays out only if you accumulate $100. Hopefully we will, but that’ll be a lot of hits.

  85. Mike Mella says:

    Yes, I certainly think we should stive to make it an advertiser-supported site. It’s best not to charge the contestants anything, and I’m sure none of us wants to spend much.

    Brian – Thanks for donating the bandwidth, but I trust this won’t be too taxing on your site. I don’t know who your host is, but bandwidth shouldn’t be an issue if you’re with a good provider like Dreamhost, as Mike Davidson’s always trumpeting here.

    Google Ads is a good idea. Perhaps we should also seek some traditional banner-ad companies too though. It could be a way to make the dough faster.

  86. I don’t have much experience with with ads, but if somebody wants to scope that out, I’d put ’em up.

  87. Mike Mella says:

    I expect that advertisers would want to see webstats and such showing that it’s worth their while advertising there, so we may have to forgo the banner ads for the first one. Unless someone can get a company to sign on this early.

  88. gordo says:

    Those were so awesome dude

  89. XINERGY says:

    This are absolutely fabulous entries. Great presentation! I very much agree with the winning choice. Very cool stuff!

    XINERGY

  90. Also, a new iPod Creativity Contest is being hosted at Push N Shove and we hope that people will come and participate. An iPod will be awarded!

  91. topando says:

    nice picture and i’m glad if I can take a part of that competition, so did competition still open or not?
    thanks a lot.
    peace

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