by Josh Arrington
On Friday, July 29th, the IT community will recognize the efforts of all the unsung hero’s that make our lives so much easier with the celebration of the 12th Annual System Administrator Day. This is an event that Cyber-Ark eagerly anticipates each time it comes around, and for the second year in a row, we will be hosting a contest via Twitter to show our appreciation for this special community. The full rules and details surrounding this year’s contest can be found on our website here — Cyber-Ark’s 2nd Annual System Administrator Appreciation Day Contest.
To summarize, this year we’re asking participants to answer this simple question over Twitter: “What is your greatest enterprise IT accomplishment in the past year?” Throw the #SysAdminDay hashtag and @Cyberark handle into your response and get CREATIVE! Unlike last year’s contest, participants are encouraged to include a URL in the Tweet that links to, for example, an image (TwitPic) or a blog post. This is not a requirement for eligibility but it may help participants to get their message across in a more impactful manner. The best response will be awarded with a prominent spot on this here blog, as well as a new Amazon Kindle!
Also, we’re adding a couple of other new wrinkles this year, namely the fact that we’re starting the contest on Monday, July 25th, and letting it run through 3 p.m. ET on Thursday, July 28th. We’ll use Friday, July 29th to promote the winner (and some of the other great responses). Even cooler, we’ve enlisted one of the SysAdmin community’s most influential evangelists and prolific bloggers, Standalone SysAdmin’s Matt Simmons to serve as judge.Matt will be joined by Cyber-Ark’s own rock star SysAdmin, Bill Pesiridis as well as Wesley David, another prolific contributor to the SysAdmin blogosphere over at his personal site, The Nubby Admin. Wesley also authors articles for such publications as SysAdmin Talk. Together, Matt, Wesley and Bill will choose the winner based on their own set of criteria for what they deem to be the best overall response. It’s safe to say that creativity will play a big role in attracting their attention, however.
In addition, on Wednesday, July 27th, we will post a new update on our blog with a link to the live Twitter Search feed of all of the entries to date (we’ll also be live streaming the participating entries through a blog plug-in throughout the week). On this post, we’ll encourage users to comment with a vote for their favorite Tweet (and we suggest that participants encourage their friends and followers to show their support with comments as well). While these comments/votes aren’t required and won’t have any bearing on the ultimate decision process for the judges, they do demonstrate excitement and community involvement for SysAdmin Day.
If you have any questions or comments—feel free to send them our way. Otherwise, we’ll see you on Monday, July 25th on Twitter. Please share this with the SysAdmin community and have fun with it!
–The Cyber-Ark team
