hey i must admit that the same thoughts went thro’ our mind(for exactly the same reasons) over the weekend when we started applying.
However its great to get a clarification from the TGDC team that the votes are not the only criteria to even get a chance to be heard & read about by the Jury. Cheers to that!!
All the best to all!!

I was afraid of the same thing. Athough our families are suppotrting us in every way possible, we cannot hope to extract vote in hundreds. That said, atleast this post gives us hope that our passion to travel and write about this unusual adventure stands a chance.
Thanks for the encouragement.

In fact, I did not realize there was this voting angle at all till I got to that page :( While I’m active on soc nets, and online a lot, feel disinclined to *spam* my contacts to enable something for ourselves. (Couldn’t delete the application either) Its the travel bit we love, and the voting etc makes it less about that and the association is more like some of the less tasteful road-shows we’ve seen on TV.

Good to read its totally not about that - and intend to stay at zero votes right through the process :D

Rgds,
Shubha and Sameer

Dear Friends
There is nothing wrong if maximum people coming from bangalore, however there are lots of other criteria for selection. So chances of getting selected with maximum votes candidate is ruled out. But i strongly feel that winners should be more, i mean it can be upto 5 or ten. If finance is a problem than you could have charged some entry fee, that way people who are not eligible can also be ruled out. Now everyone is invited, so coming into 100 becoming tough

Three cheers for the jury!

We do agree 100% that this should be played fair.

We are very excited to be a part of this challenge and look forward to adding positive value to the entire effort.

Though we are also a couple from IT industry and do have a very good circle who are helping us in every manner they can, we still were very concerned how we can get over 800 people to vote for us like some other contestants have done (Not sure ethically or tactically).

We know how hard it was to call, email and IM so many people and request them to ask their friends to vote for us. We spent almost 6 hours over the phone last weekend, endless emails to friends and communities we are part of.

We certainly very sincerely appreciate all my friends, colleagues and everyone who has voted for me.

To our heart felt happiness, our very very busy clients, directors, VPs, friends from US on senior management have taken time to vote for us.

We do have beautiful memories with friends and colleagues to cherish and will continue to enjoy life whether we win or lose.

After all we got to know 700 !! couples with whom we can interact while we are out on our next road trip !!

Good luck everyone.

Owning a digital SLR with expensive lenses, tripod, accessories, travel gear, a car that was driven 85000 kms in 4 years (with a IT job 9pm-9pm) make us unethical contestants just because someone else cannot afford the gear and they complained about it?

Not at all! Just enjoy your gear! and the challenge!

I spent USD 5000 in USA last year while I was there on a project. I can afford it.  The fireworks shots in my album are from 4th july macy’s fireworks in new york, the fish shots are humpack whales on boston coastline. I have a story attached to every shot I have on my flickr account.

We trust the TGDC team for playing fair and that is the reason we have contested this challenge. We will appreciate if the comments in the blog are not biased or influenced by personal experiences by email or in person.

I would be most happy to show or prove to any representative of TGDC, all my gear I have got, photos originals uploaded by me on flickr, and of course a free photo shoot for TGDC team ;o)

We want to live this opportunity of a great drive while the whole world watches us, blog from the road (we have not done it yet), and have 700 friends who are like minded!!

Of course nobody competes to lose :o)

Three cheers to the TGDC team for playing fair.
Ram & Rakhi

Hey, I completely agree and dis-agree with this thought (and if I am doing well in votes section then it’s merely a co-incidence). I am part of management team of an offshore company. Belive you me, it is not easy for anyone to reach out and ask for mass votes. The IT policies are strict to ensure that you cannot access any other website except for what is required for work. So people thinking that if you work for call center or IT software company then you can get more votes is not entirely correct.

Having said that I dont discount the folks who have single names in votes and logical pattern to easily identify fake votes, go on their app and you can easily make that out. But again as mentioned earlier, this is not the only criteria for selection.

Here is what I did:
1. Reached out to family and friends.
2. Reached out to my ex colleagues, school friends and asked for testimonials.
3. My brother-in-law at London university virtually reached out to all his class-mates and asked them to read first about me and then vote if they liked.
4. I floated my own blog site, which was long overdue and I kept ignoring due to my professional committments.
5. Picked up my Canon DSLR and started practicing (note pictures of golf course taken from my balcony, it looks amazing).

Overall, I would say instead of cribbing and cursing, enjoy yourself, this is important. Reach out to all those folks you haven’t called in years and feel the joy (and ofcourse ask for votes too). Connect back and cherish your relations and friendship which you have been ignoring.

I feel even before the contest gets over, this has already made me win some happiness which we ignore almost everyday.

I loved the tagline which read “Say goodbye to never ending work hours…”

I want to wish everyone who is part of this contest a very best of luck. Just do your bit and enjoy.

By the way…lot of votes not necessarily mean wrong means. Cheers! -Rishi

Good to know that the selection is not only based on voting. But, there is nothing wrong in most of the votes flowing from banglore. If people have good friends circle and ability to campaign there application among friends and relatives, there are always chances of getting more votes.

Everything depends purely on our hardwork and how well we are connected to our friends and relatives.

PLAY FAIR,PLAY FAIR, and just PLAY FAIR… my only request to every1.

All the best to every1 and 3 cheers to TGDC!!!

Deepak

Waiting eagerly to participate in this.Just a few miles away we can reach at our destination in that sporty car..Love a lot such kind of nature expedition which generally available to c in soaps and raveling guides.Thanxs to the group that they are allowing to creep out from the damn inside hole type of world ,to see what exactly a nature is?

        Can anybody make clear what all the criteria going to follow in this competition?

Thanks & Regards,

Aditya and Preeti

Glad to know the votes are not the only thing which matters to be part of the ‘chosen’ 100.

Someone posted this in my testimonial:

“What did you two do over the weekend that you went past all other contestants. Hope there has been a fair play ”

Here is my reply to Mr (or Mrs or Ms) Anonymous:

“We had a wonderful weekend, we took kids out for a movie since their vacation was getting over, also met some relatives. I also did a video conference with some university students in London asking them for votes.

On the fair bit…Administrators have already checked (see blog above) for authenticity. I invite anyone again to scrutinize votes in any detail.

I suggest instead of feeling jealous or cribbing, try to find your own feet that might help you become better competitor.”

The one thing that I think people are missing out in this challenge is the power of networking. We live in online worlds today through which we are infinitely connected.

The term that this contest aims to bring alive is “networks of networks”. Most people who sign up on Facebook/Orkut/Hi5/Yaari etc already have 300+ contacts and atleast 150 contacts in their gmail lists. Couple this with anything between 100-100,000 colleagues at the workplaces, 100-400 batchmates from graduation/post-grad days, 1000-10,000 alumni networks and the infinity of followers on sites such as Twitter, and we end up with “possible” figures of 10,000 votes easily.

But the catch lies in two things: 1) Generating interest through content and 2) delivering that content across in the most un-irritating way to the largest audience possible.

The “interesting content” bit is already there in the Application form, so good content SHOULD lead to more votes - its just how well you market yourselves on social networking sites and how well you use these sites (FB/Twitter/Orkut/Blogger) to gather this attention. Delivering the content through social media and other sources is how you have to innovate, obviously!

So, there it is. I do not believe that 800 votes is a very high number, instead I can wager that if done correctly 10,000 GENUINE votes can be gathered. Its all upto your creativity and understanding the nuances of social networking.

Some numbers to wrap it up, the average “popular” video on YouTube has >40,000 votes for rating it (not views which run into millions!), comments on rediff.com’s articles run upto 1000+ sometimes, flickr sites have >100 comments on popular photos and so on…

At the end of the day, all of these videos, photos, blogs, content have done the most important thing > Generate interest through content and deliver it effectively.

Get the content. Get the votes. At the end of the day, the GDC is not only about talking about your travels/trips/cars but also getting it through to the largest audience possible. This is the only way in which Mitsubishi would benefit from the GDC.

Cheers!
Joseph

one of the rules says - “A visitor can submit only one vote per participant per day.”... leaves it open for multiple voting from single ID

is this really fair?

those who register early have an advantage… cest la vie?

Looks like it does not work that way… i tried it… looks like the folks at TGDC decided it was not fair and plugged the loophole

One vote per person per email Id… seems fair to me

Maximum votes or none, I do think most participants will agree that this contest has opened up other avenues. Meeting new people for one. I’ve been interacting with fellow contestants on several social netorks and its amazing to see the healthy competition spirit.

Its been nice to read up experiences of others, developing a new perspective to what was believed to work in a particular way only.

Best of luck to all of us guys, may the most deserving team win!

Hello friends,

right from day 1 till today, my greatest fear is what if I don’t get shortlisted. I, in my past have never done blogging or never been so much into all this. But, this contest is important to me, and I have learnt blogging for this, just because I don’t want to loose.

And when I sa people getting 400, then 500, then 800 and now in 1000s, I got scared because I know, the social circle I have cannot get me that many votes, but I am still trying as much as I can to get many Votes an at the same time, I am praying that what TGDC Organisers have promised, may happen. I am happy that Votes are not the only criteria. and with this trust, I ill continue steering my application through this challanging drive.

Just to let everyone know, that I was looking for a job when this contest was rolled out, and see,I have postponed my job hunt till August 24th… you know, why… Coz, till August 17th, I will be driving my travel plan, and then Augst 22nd I will celebrate my Win and my Birthday… and then after resting for another 2 days, I’ll start with my job hunt… Howzzzzz that…???

and my message to all the couples who have applied… Best of luck to everyone… (but beware, the Black Misubishi Cedia will be mine… the other two couples should not fight with me later, i have already rolled ot my preference…!!!)

See ya in Mumbai on Aug 3rd…!!!
Bushra and Vinny

Yes I agree it’s difficult to get vote in thousand, but it’s not impossible. There goes a saying: Where there is a will, there is a way. Stop looking at others vote bank & Testimonials. Why not concentrate on one’s strengths and work in that direction?

It all began like this, As usual I started the day with morning news papers, and came across the Cedia Great Driving Challenge Ad, the promo was so exciting, that I registered our application at 7.20 am, Probably we were the among the first to register. We started working on the list of my potential voter friends by 8.30. Initially that list went on to a score of 350 friends for both of us… but when I looked further at our Online Community friends the number crossed more than 4000!

This list did not include 100s of engineers who meet us annually, and hundreds of students who studied under my Geeta. That list of buddies crossed another big sum. This was enough for us to feel comfortable and work on the vote bank.

Next step required is to work hard to contact each & every one, and ask them to visit our profile at GDC and also to our very own URL http://www.praful.in which has large collection of photo-blog from past several years.

Friends, this is a game, big game, lets play fair, it really doesn’t matter we stand on 1st or 20th, what matters is real stuff! Show our stuff, past records & play.

We wish every participant Good luck & let’s remember that we all took part n worked towards a common goal, in that sense we all are friends, let’s remain that way forever. 
Cheers,
From,
Geeta & Praful

Hey everybody…
We kinda registered late. And honestly didnt know how we wud pull up the votes, coz when i saw the top rankers - 1000 votes smacked us down…
but nevertheless, i guess iz the passion which drives the instincts…
Freinds, family, colleagues all have been so supportive which gives us a feel good factor…
at the end, even thoguh we cant pull in the considerable number of votes, or we arent to active on the networking sector, i guess the jury wud play a fair game on deciding who’s in for da game….
Cheerzz and all da best to all the contenders!!!

Beat this!!!!!!..... 3 days 2700 votes for our #1 Popular couple (https://greatdrivingchallenge.com/application/JOGESH/) .... assuming no foul play… hats off to the couple’s marketing skill set.

Since the voting is now over by any chance would the couple kindly share with us the wisdom behind such a overwhelming and an intimidating number of votes in such a shrt span…

cheers!!!
May the fairest of all win!!!