[PLUG-ANNOUNCE] 2nd Annual Book Review/OSCON Pass Contest!

Michael Dexter dexter at ambidexter.com
Tue Jun 23 14:12:55 UTC 2015


Dear active PLUG members,

The kind folks at O'Reilly Media were impressed with PLUG's collective 
response to last year's write-a-book-review-for-a-chance-to-win-a-pass 
contest and offered to run it again this year!

The contest: Write a public book review of any O'Reilly title for a 
chance to will a full sessions pass to OSCON 2015!

Who is eligible: Active PLUG members, defined as those active on the
mailing list or have attended two or more meetings in the last year.

The winning review will be chosen based on:

Depth - Do you fully appreciate the strengths & weaknesses of the book?

Clarity - Do you communicate that fact and help people make a buying 
decision?

Sincerity - Be funny or passionate! Sincere reviews sell books.

Relevance/Timeliness - It is a new release? Is it a hot topic?

Effort - Is this your first review? The book's first review on say, Amazon?

Venue - Will anyone see your review? Amazon is great.

A review should help make (and at times break) a buying decision. There
ARE crap books out there but rarely from O'Reilly. I LOVE
thoughtful negative reviews but they probably won't win you the pass. 
Vengeful reviews however, are off-putting on many levels.

HOW: Simply post a link to your review to the PLUG mailing list or a
verifiable form of proof that it will be printed in a future publication.

HELP: O'Reilly has kindly provided a selection of free eBooks to get you 
going: http://www.oreilly.com/pub/get/plug2015 Just tell them it is for 
the PLUG contest. If you don't see something that interest you, visit 
http://www.oreilly.com/free/ebookrequest.csp and ask.

FURTHER HELP: I am happy to give you feedback having written a few 
reviews myself. Consider: http://www.amazon.com/review/R24J5P38R9ZAVV

DEADLINE: "Before OSCON" but I am open to a fixed, earlier deadline if
it risks ruling out an active list contributor who lives outside
Portland and would have to make travel arrangements.

Good luck!

Michael Dexter
PLUG Volunteer




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