The results are in for the Perfect Pitch Competion!

And, after extensive tabulation by the men in the backroom (pictured in my last post on Saturday (spent most of the day Sunday tabulating results, checking and re-checking and integrating last minute judging panelist input,)) a Winner has been determined… Dat… da da dat dat da…

Lee LeFever — By More Than — A Nose!!!

Or is that a nose? Sorry folks, but if you check out the above links, you will find that Lee has been talking a lot about 'noses' on his weblog as of late.

I clicked through to Lee LeFever's weblog this morning and saw that Lee went to Emerald Downs over the weekend and bet on the ponies for the first time, and mostly lost. Well the good news is that you mostly won here in the 'Perfect Pitch' competition Lee.

Congratulations Lee!

You have won a $100 Amazon Gift Certificate from The Social Software Weblog's sponsor Spoke Software, and the placement of your winning pitch, along with reflections on this Corporate Weblogging Perfect Pitch Challenge, on the weblogs of our judging panelists!

Thanks go out to all of the participants in this event as well as the judging panelists who took time out of their crazy schedules to read through and evaluate each pitch based on a number of different parameters.

Thank you one and all for your participation!

Runners Up:

Second Place — Randal Moss
Third Place (tied) — Michael Angeles & Jack Vinson

Judging Panelists:

Dave Pollard, Dina Mehta, Don Park, Flemming Funch, Jim McGee, Lilia Efimova, Martin Dugage, Phil Wolff, Ross Mayfield, Scott Allen, and Ton Zijlstra

And the Winning Pitch:

First, think about the value of the Wall Street Journal to business leaders. The value it provides is context — the Journal allows readers to see themselves in the context of the financial world each day, which enables more informed decision making.
              
With this in mind, think about your company as a microcosm of the financial world.  Can your employees see themselves in the context of the whole company? Would more informed decisions be made if employees and leaders had access to internal news sources?
 
Weblogs serve this need.  By making internal websites simple to update, weblogs allow individuals and teams to maintain online journals that chronicle projects inside the company. These professional journals make it easy to produce and access internal news, providing context to the company — context that can profoundly affect decision making.  In this way, weblogs allow employees and leaders to make more informed decisions through increasing their awareness of internal news and events.