Is Peer Voting the Way to Go?

[Carl C]

I would like to make this clear up front: I'm not trying to put down any of the winning animations. You guys did amazing! And Autodesk does a great job running this competition.

I'm just not sure that peer voting is the best way to do the competition, mainly because I fear that it doesn't give the "little guys" a chance.

It's not as if every team already has an account. In fact, most of the teams that I talked to didn't even know that they could vote. I felt like there was no initiative to have every team vote, and thus it was up to us (the teams that entered) to get people voting.

But here's the problem with that: if I ask you to vote in a contest that I entered that you don't particularly care about, who are you going to vote for? Me, of course. It's the courteous thing to do. I asked you and it would be awkward to tell me you voted for someone else. Now, imagine if we did this for the chairman's award!

From my perspective, it seems that the way the regional animation award is set up, it gives an advantage to teams with more connections.

I think that the best animation should win, not the animation with the best campaigning.

Anyways, I'm going to get off my soapbox and I would like to know what you guys think. Do you see any advantages to the current system? I would love to learn, and I'm sure that I'm missing something. I do not wish to offend anyone, and I hope this post was both gracious and professional.