Remember those folks who did the awesome dance-sculptures at last year's Academy Awards?
They're the world's premier modern dance troupe and they're performing at the Eisemann Center on February 9. (They're also doing a special, exclusive master class the night before.)
Tickets for this show are going fast-- I just checked the Eisemann site and it looks like there are less than 50 left to be had. (Side note-- I wish all venues would show a realtime view of which seats remain available.)
Meantime, you can win a free pair of tickets here on Pegasus News, courtesy of our advertising partner the Eisemann Center.
Here's how to enter:
- Make sure you're logged in to your PegNews account. If you don't have one, get one.
- Favorite the performance, the master class and/or the Eisemann Center by clicking the "Add to favorites" link on those pages.
- You can enter up to three times by favoriting the two events and the Eisemann.
- We'll draw a winner for two tickets on January 31.
- The usual suspects (our staff and families, Eisemann employees, the guy who cut me off in traffic this morning, etc.) aren't eligible.
Comments
Mike Orren Staff
To answer a question I just received, if you already favorited the Eisemann Center, you're pre-entered for this contest.
1 year, 5 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Scott Doyle Verified
Another question: can I invite a staff member if I win?
1 year, 5 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Mike Orren Staff
That's very kind of you, Scott. You may take whomever you like. I'd be honored to go!
Bribery does not, however, increase your chances of winning.
Much.
1 year, 5 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Scott Doyle Verified
;-)
It's entirely likely I've doomed my chances since it'd be too coincidental should my name happen to be drawn. Needs more witnesses.
1 year, 5 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Scott Anonymous
No belligerent intent in asking this, but doesn't this announcement kind of result in a gaming of the system? The Eisemann Center puts up a couple of tickets, in exchange for which they get a promotion on Pegasus News's blog and, presumably, a spike in the "favorites" rating of the venue and a couple of upcoming events at the venue.
As evidence of the skewing effect of the promotion, I offer up myself. I've seen Pilobolus on TV a few times, but would probably not buy tickets to go see their show. I certainly wouldn't take the trouble to seek out the listing for their show on this site and name it my "favorite." I've never been to an event at the Eisemann Center. But would I go see Pilobolus at the Eisemann Center if I had free tickets? Possibly. And, if not, I could always find someone to give the tickets to. So I take a few seconds to "favorite" Pilobolus, the master class, and the Eisemann Center, creating the false impression of enthusiasm or support.
Would it be an acceptable promotion for a restaurant to do the same thing? Dinner for two, with names drawn from everyone who lists restaurant x as a "favorite"? Would that be less objectionable than a similar promotion with names drawn from those who give the restaurant an average score of 4 or better in the reviews?
Just curious about the thinking behind this. You guys are scrupulous enough that I'm sure there was some prior discussion about the propriety of it.
1 year, 5 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
luniz Anonymous
OTOH, I thought about doing that for a chance at the tickets...and decided not to. Since I've never been to any of that stuff before.
1 year, 5 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Mike Orren Staff
Scott:
First, no belligerence imputed and no offense taken. We're about transparency here and are always happy to explain what we're doing and to reexamine when necessary.
First, let me explain what we're doing and why we constructed the promotion as we did. Eisemann is an advertiser, as I disclosed in the post, and as part of the deal, we agreed to do a ticket giveaway.
When we do a contest like this, we have several goals:
So this seemed to fulfill all of the above. By just favoriting, a registered user doesn't have to fill out a form. And they have to learn more about the event by going to the page. And favoriting is a feature that a lot of people get use out of, but not everyone has caught onto yet. So the mechanism meets all our goals. And by your statement that this was not an event you would have sought out, it seems to be working well.
To the ethics of it, I suppose we would look at it differently if we used favoriting as a mechanism to rank or rate things on the site -- we currently do not. Favoriting something currently adds it to your profile so you can find it easily. In some cases (like bands), it's a cue for us to give you a heads up when there's an upcoming show. It's not as though Pegasus Picks take into account numbers of favorites or there is any place you can go to find "best places as ranked by favorites." So I don't see any artificial advantage created here. It's not as though someone seeing that the event has some favorites knows that it is the most-favorited event on the site. And, the event page has a link to the contest, so anyone examining carefully enough to gauge the number of favorites can easily see the details.
We're still thinking of "favorites" as things that someone has tagged to remind themselves of and not a review. I'm interested to hear if that's how they're being perceived, or if people are judging the worthiness of an event or place based on the number of favorites. (We originally talked about calling the favoriting feature "noted" or "tagged," but decided that people would get the concept more easily with this language.)
We are planning to eventually add some features like "most-favorited restaurants" and I do see how that could be a slippery slope. We'll have to think and discuss thoroughly whether or how we can use this mechanism for things that are on such lists.
But I can guarantee that we will never make a contest dependent upon writing a positive review, and if we catch someone outside doing so, we'll out them publicly. We did give away Savor Dallas tickets to review writers last year (and will do so again this year), but that was independent of whether the review was positive or negative.
I don't know if it would be acceptable to give away dinner to a restaurant to people who favorited it -- We're in experimental mode these days, and I'd be inclined to try it (and just about anything else) to see how it works. But I think we'd also include a disclosure on the page that such a contest was run. And in the unlikely event we didn't, I know that one of our regular readers would do so in the comments.
1 year, 5 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Scott Anonymous
Thanks for the explanation.
1 year, 5 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Jeremy Dunck Staff
Just to push a bit on what Mike said: we (techies) are actually looking to make favorites more useful, and seeing most-favorited things (places, events, etc.) seems like a straight-forward useful thing to do. We're also planning to add network-y stuff so that things your favorite users have, themselves, favorited are easy for you to find.
So yeah, slippery slope.
(I don't think the code for that is written yet. Mike, we should talk more. ;-))
1 year, 5 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Mike Orren Staff
A belated note-- Scott (not Doyle) in the thread above won the tickets. And before you start accusing me of buying off the guy who questioned the contest, I have a roomful of people who can testify that the drawing was truly random.
1 year, 4 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
Scott Doyle Verified
Scott (not Doyle)
Aw. =(
1 year, 4 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
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