Conflict is a photo contest on Lenzr, and story sauce on the internet.

The number one failure of boring public speakers, bad business presentations, and weak online storytelling is the lack of conflict.

Hero driven social media marketing is built on a dynamic relationship between two or more characters, and its most powerful when presented as a protagonist’s struggle against a formidable antagonist. The journey from problem to solution should be a storyful vessel filled with human emotion on a compelling character arc, cause that’s what people remember…

Smojoe Social Media Marketing in Toronto endeavours to do business without conflict, and all case studies proudly showcase positive and productive client relationships. But when composing good brand stories an Online Social Relevance Director, cognizant of his client’s best keywords, campaigns and community managers, should isolate and engineer the most interesting examples of ‘human business’ to achieve a myth making that fuels viral connectivity. And this should include conflict.

Conflict really will occur when voting begins on September 20th 2010;  its then we’ll see professional photographers and contesters line up their social networks to vote for their favourite pictures.  There will be elaborate vote fraud detection systems running right up until the contest ends on Oct 1st 2010. The highest ranked photo wins a Blackberry mobile phone.  Take pictures of conflict and upload them to Lenzr and you could WIN a Blackberry BOLD* 9700

Smojoe social media marketing uses Lenzr photo contests as a tool in their quest to build high quality social capital for their clients. The firm also authors Canada Blog Friends, and does blogger outreach through multiple channels in Canada and the United States.  This company authors compelling stories that intrigue humans and satisfy search engine robots.  Smojoe social media marketing always improves client search engine rankings – each story funnel is a punch of online social relevance.

Located in Toronto, EcoDeckBuilder is an environmentally sustainable deck building company that uses all manner of green building solutions both on and off their job sites. Their energy efficient trucks pull equipment trailers adorned with solar panels. These solar ‘work units’ are fully equipped with emission free, battery powered tools. The sun’s energy propels the team’s battery powered saws and drills, compressors and other construction devices. These guys really are friendly space age builders with great deck designs and powerful imaginations.

People Building Things photo contest is an old idea that stems from a natural fascination humans have watching other people work, especially if they are building something interesting. The contest reminds us of a story about how the final stages of the CN tower assembly used to stop traffic in downtown Toronto as citizens admired the helicopters installing the uppermost sections of this monolithic structure.

Construction sites are even more interesting when they happen at home, in the backyard, or on the driveway in front of the garage. Show us people building parade floats and fishing boats, or doing an interesting home renovation. Perhaps you have pictures of people building a tree house? or putting in a dock, or constructing a veranda or even building new homes and cottages?

Ontario photographers submit your own pictures of People Building Things and tell us the story behind the picture. Be sure and mention what’s being put together. Tell us all where the picture came from and when, and you could Win An iPad courtesy of Eco Deck Builder, an Ontario deck building company. Voting begins September 20th 2010 and the highest ranked photograph automatically wins the prize when the Contest ends October 1st, 2010. Must be 13yrs old or older to enter, open to all Canadians, excluding Quebec.

Eco Deck Builder job sites are quieter than your neighbours’ pool, and their green building techniques let everyone enjoy nature.

Citizens of Planet Earth, stop using gas and diesel generators! Solarline Power strongly objects to anyone mixing oil and gas to make the blue smoke exhaust in dirty two cycle engines.  With very few exceptions, two cycle engines should not be used for any reason! Solarline Power makes and assembles portable solar power generators (PSG’s) that are quiet and deliver clean renewable power. These units charge batteries that can replace small engines as a power source on a great many industrial tools.

SolarLine’s Mobile Solar Work Units deliver remote power for outdoor rock concerts, field hospitals and remote construction sites. This company works diligently to make solar powered battery charging systems for the next generation of power tools and battery powered devices that will replace gas and diesel generators, and banish all two cycle engines to the history books.

Green power is affordable, especially solar power because of the low maintenance costs and lengthy product guarantees – each solar panel on a Solarline Mobile Solar Work Unit is guaranteed for 25 years, and the batteries are guaranteed for 8 years by their manufacturers.  So when consumers factor in the long term costs of fuel and upkeep, solar powered systems and devices are good investments.

Solar powered calculators and wrist watches have been with us for many years.  The future will bring many more such handy solar powered devices to  North American households.

Morning Sunshine photo contest on Lenzr – Ontario photographers are asked to capture people and objects in the early morning sunshine. Voting begins September 20th 2010, the highest ranked photo will automatically Win an Apple iPad prize when the web challenge ends October 1st 2010, must be 13yrs old or older to enter, open to all Canadians, excluding Quebec.

Special thanks to Michael Reichmann, the Ontario photographer who generously allowed us to use his  Sunrise_Barn photo for the primary contest plate, here’s the host Ontario photography gallery where we found this beautiful gem.

Cinematographers call late afternoon the ‘Golden Hour’ and Hollywood movie scenes are sometimes lensed in the hours just before sunset – Thelma and Louise for example, can you remember Sigorney Weaver’s glowing hair in those the driving scenes in their stolen convertible car? That’s a great example of golden hour photography. By contrast the early morning light is called ‘Magic Hour’ and although not as popular, its often even more spectacular because of the beautiful light that first trespasses through the Earth’s cool atmosphere at dawn. Those first rays of light glow the fresh morning mists and ignite the dew drops on the leaves; they celebrate the dawn of a new day.

Although almost nobody ever thinks to go there, the roof is the one place you can be certain you”ll be left alone for a while… that’s because nobody would ever think to look for you up there, and if you turn off your phone you just might experience an hour or two of near perfect solitude.

The view from the roof above your own home or business can be spectacular, or rather depressing depending on your own perspective, and photography skills… Depressing views can also be really interesting though, and if you can show a piece of the roof on which you’re perched it would make the excellence of your entry in this web challenge more assured.

Photographers, if you can manage it, please show us all some really dirty rooftops with broken shingles and grass in the eaves troughs. Show us the view from roofs that are forests and beautiful gardens and or roofs that need repair in the foreground of your image to set the tone for the landscape, or cityscape beyond.

The Lenzr View From The Roof photo contest endeavours to collect the vistas from properties all across Canada.

In the crowded cities its becoming really fashionable to build gardens and green space on the tops of buildings. White roofs are cooler and they reflect sunlight back into the atmosphere. Lenzr admin hopes that some of these green and white images will appear in this diverse photo challenge. Also welcome are images of  sharply inclined snow covered rooftops in our nation’s most northern cities and towns, and these will will hopefully be contrasted by asphalt and tar covered flat roofs of the industrial parks beside Canada’s biggest cities.

The registered member that uploads the highest ranked will WIN AN IPAD! Voting begins September 20th 2010 – the highest ranked photograph automatically wins prize when the Contest Ends October 1st, 2010. Must be 13yrs old or older to enter, open to all Canadians, excluding Quebec.

All Weather Roofing specializes in flat roof repair in the greater Toronto Area.  Are you thinking about installing a new flat roof this summer? Call these experts and get a free quote for a ToughRoof system.

TOUGHROOF is a WHITE multi-layer flat roofing system with no seams. The new age roof coating is is extremely versatile, and ToughRoof is the only White flat roofing system that can be placed over top of your existing flat roof – saving consumers a great deal of money and saving the planet more precious landfill space.

TOUGHROOF is probably the very best surface for solar panels and solar cell installation and is also a welcome addition to green roof applications, under gardens and rooftop patios in Canada. All Weather Roofing is built on experience, and with over 59 years experience in roofing, this firm really does stand behind its work. All TOUGHROOF warranties last forever and are fully transferable. This is the last permanent flat roof system your building will ever need.

Anyone who frequents Lenzr in August 2010 will notice there are some new developments, in addition to four new photo contests.

The photography challenges end October 1st, 2010 and there’ll be a whole lot more good information about them on this blog in the immediate future. The changes to the voting protocols on the website are permanent.

The new Lenzr voting protocol promises to level the playing field and ramp up the excitement.  Now each photographer’s pictures will be on display only, until there are just ten days left in the contest. When the countdown ends, the time to vote begins! This upgrade should make each contest 2x more exciting, and 100% more fair.

In the past we’ve  had problems keeping the contests fair.  Lenzr is still evolving and we discovered over time that the contests were set up to favour early adopters. Users that were the first to upload pictures always had a much better chance of winning because of the volume of members and voting visitors that saw their pictures first and any vote no matter how small helps each photo.

This idea for a countdown mechanism came to  us from a member that emailed suggestions to help improve the overall Lenzr user experience.  Fortunately, when we hear a good idea we jump on it – six months later!  This update is long overdue but is expected to radically improve the overall fairness of the competition, and the overall user experience.

Lenzr hopes to create a photography competition that is fair and equal for everyone involved. There is no question that the best photo should win, but quality is subjective – what might be considered beautiful by some users may be hideously ugly and unprofessional to others. So its only when we can poll the masses and take the mean averages that admiration can be properly quantified to determine the preferences of the voting population.

INSIGHT – in the next upgrade there will be a coupon distribution mechanism added to incentivize Lenzr members to vote on images.