I thought I knew everything about improving my chances of winning competitions until, that is, I spoke to my TEN year old! Then it all got a little…well – daunting. This is what happened:
I was in the middle of a self-congratulating moment, thinking about how much knowledge I’d recently amassed about entering competitions. I know how to enter ‘like and share’ competitions, use Facebook apps and enter competitions using twitter a hashtag, Instagram and Pinterest – I honestly thought that was all there was to know…Until I heard this:
Daughter: Can I go to the Apple Store to learn about making my own video on my iPad? It’s really cool, you get to add sound effects (delighted face) – and then I can do those video competitions that I saw on Into Film.
Me: Eek! What?
It turns out that she wanted to me to sign her up to a three day workshop that Apple are running in their stores throughout the summer for children aged 8-12. After recovering from a near-anxiety attack and mournful of my now deteriorated sense of ‘I am SO with-it’ I realised that his workshop could be the perfect thing to take my daughter to – because an adult (me) would have to supervise her!
Why would that make me happy?
I don’t have to DO it! I’m a supervisor – an essentially hands-off experience! I remember taking the same ‘suck it and see’ approach with Facebook and Twitter – I joined the bandwagon after my friends, the guinea pigs, said that it was easy. I then independently joined Instagram, Pinterest and have a Vine account because it follows the same principles – sign up, enter details and follow the tutorial and know more than they do!
Everything is easy once you can do it. I know this, but still – the idea of actually making an all singing and dancing video combining two apps scares the life out of me. After looking at the link – (here, if you are interested: http://www.applersvp.com/uk ) I realise that this fear might be the same feeling I had about Facebook and Twitter.
Maybe my daughter can be my guinea pig?
There’s a great quote from Douglas Adams regarding all this new technology business, that I’m determined to keep in mind:
“I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you are born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that’s invented between when you were fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it
3. Anything invented after you are thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”
He may be right…but there’s no harm in trying to learn from the new competition generation is there? I suppose I’ll have to watch and wait…
How do you get on with technology in entering competitions? Are you nostalgic about the good old days in the competition world or are you up for any new thing that increases your chances of winning competitions, be it social media platforms or apps? Let us know in the comments (try not to get too technical! Haha)