Vote early, vote often: Linux Foundation "We're Linux" voting begins

The Linux Foundation "We're Linux" contest is entering its final stages. This weekend, the submission phase wrapped up and now it's time for the larger community to do what it does best: Submit the work to as many eyeballs as possible to find the best entries.

Since I'm one of the contest judges, I won't announce any of my favorites here. However, if you're looking for suggestions, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols picks seven of the best from the pack.

Head over to the Linux Foundation Video Site and click on the blue stars under the videos to rate them. (You'll need to be logged into the Web site to be able to rate the videos.)

The top 10 rated videos will be selected next Wednesday for the "We're Linux" judges to vote on. As mentioned when the contest started, the winner will win a trip to Japan for the Linux Foundation's Linux Symposium in October 2009.

Real fun should start after the contest, when we see if the videos make any sort of dent in spreading the word about Linux. The video contest is a good start, but only a start. The Linux community needs to find as many ways as possible to achieve with marketing what it's already figured out with code: How to turn a distributed contributor base into a machine for making things happen.

If all the video contest succeeds in doing is sending one lucky submitter to Tokyo, it won't be much of a success. The challenge now is going to be how to get the winning videos in front of the larger audience that knows little to nothing about Linux?