Message from Rob Campbell, the Executive Contest Producer
Occasionally the Lenzr admin writes dispatches to the membership outlining positive changes and technical evolutions to the Lenzr website. We are growing ever more popular, but slowly, and not so much through software innovation any more as by hosting imaginative contests that appeal to the masses. Each contest is like a stage play, or a project that we mount – and we never really know how successful the live event will be until it happens. Each contest is a story, as I have said before, and every picture is a sentence in the multimedia document, and together we wait to see who wins, and how the story ends.

Regarding the Website Crash(es)
Already House for Renovation and Electronic Engineering matches are breaking the bank and, as it turns out, breaking the website too. There was something restrictive in the database tables? Something fuzzy was happening there, and it was breaking every day as the website peaked in users and activity.

What to do? Pay smart people to fix it quick was the solution. And that’s what we’re doing/have done. It is still and will always be a work in progress, I’m sure.

Regarding the SPAM
I cannot tell you how stressful and embarrassing it is to operate a community software based website that doesn’t allow users to EDIT or DELETE the ubiquitous spam comments that accrue in such destinations all over the internet. Even the admin can’t moderate comments in our new website. And yet we (sometimes) pride ourselves on developing thoughtful and intuitive software solutions… our Achilles heel is that we have overlooked that critical component that every successful user generated content / interactive design MUST have. Now, today it’s a soleful task to receive and reply to countless emails asking for remedy. To everyone with SPAM on their profile pages I apologize and encourage you to Report Spam in the Discussion Forum here. It will all be mopped up and wiped away eventually.

Regarding the Toronto Christmas Market Photo Contest

Holy smokes the Toronto Christmas Market photo contest on Lenzr is an incredible success! There are now over 300 images in the gallery! That’s more than twice as many photos in this Community Contest module than in any featured contest Lenzr has ever run in its two and half years of operation, which is over sixty contests. There are twice as many votes as the highest ranked featured contests too. It shows the power of cross platform marketing and the value of developing the photo contest feeds for 3rd party client website hosts. This contest has become an incredible example of just what’s possible when you host a gallery of pictures on your website chronicling an event.

This photo, Christmas sunset by a new user named silverlink is one of my favourites.

If you have a photo in this match, please watch the next video we produce which will hopefully go live before January first, that will show the actual judges live voting and making their decisions on-camera right in front f your eyes! hopefully, if all goes well. Keep your fingers crossed YOU could be a winner!

Here’s a snapshot of Lenzr’s traffic from Nov 22nd to today, Dec 22nd 2011

And that’s a great place to sign off saying ‘have a merry Christmas’ ; we all thank you for your participation and patience and your great photography – please  look forward to more great matches on Lenzr in 2012.