Nominating a blogger

There is a contest being sponsored by WebAds and Nefesh B'Nefesh. The contest is to choose a blogger who will be sent by NBN to Israel for the upcoming jbloggers conference. the blogger will be attached to a family making aliya on the flight preceding the conference. he or she will write about the family's experience making aliya and will participate in the conference.

Send your fellow blogger on a free round-trip visit to Israel!

Now’s your chance to select a Jewish blogger who will be flying on a Nefesh B’Nefesh charter Aliyah flight on Monday, September 7, 2009 and attend the Second International Jewish Bloggers Convention.

Nominate your fellow blogger with the "Send a Friend" form on the JBloggers.org website and with a post on your blog, and be sure to read the terms and conditions on the site to make sure your entry qualifies.

If you want to try to get on the flight, get a fellow blogger to nominate you.

http://jbloggers.org/send-a-friend

The terms are simple:

1. To nominate a fellow blogger, you must be registered to attend the convention
   (in person or online).
2. The nominated blogger can be located in Israel or the U.S.
3. You must post on your blog who you nominated and why
   (and obviously send us the information too).
4. The blogger you nominate does not need to be registered to attend the convention.
5. The nominated blogger must have a Jewish blog
   (i.e. about Jews, Judaism, Israel, etc.).
6. The blogger who flies in will be linked up with an Oleh/Olah/Family, and must write a series of posts about that experience.
7. If you want to win, you must find a fellow blogger to nominate you.
8. You can nominate more than one blogger (but don’t go overboard).
9. All nominations must be in by Thursday, September 3, 2009.
10. The NBN flight to Israel is on Monday, Sept. 7, 2009.

Additional terms and conditions

1. The ticket is round-trip JFK-Israel.
2. No ground accommodations or any other expenses are included.
3. The winner will be selected by Nefesh B’Nefesh.

The choice is very difficult. There are a lot of good bloggers out there who are all worthy of being selected. I am torn as far how to choose who to nominate. I can nominate an old-time blogger who has done a lot to promote blogging, and himself is a blogger with a large audience. I can nominate any one of a few newer bloggers that have smaller audiences but are "up and coming", will do well with this project. I can nominate big bloggers. I can nominate bloggers I'd like to meet. I can nominate bloggers who I think would do well with a trip to Israel (think Birthright). Or any of a number of other methods to select my nominee.

Also, I would hope that the experience of blogging about a family in the process of making aliyah will help encourage said blogger himself (or herself) to consider making aliyah and perhaps engender such feelings of a desire to move to Eretz Yisrael.

So, who to choose? Who to choose?

I don't know who can come if they are selected, and who would reject it anyway because they cannot come. I have seen some great nominees on other blogs, and I really had a hard time choosing. It would be much easier if we could nominate a list of a few bloggers.

Being that I can only choose one, I would apologize in advance to the many bloggers who are deserving of the nomination, but I am going to go with Lion of Zion. He meets just about all of the criteria I considered - LOZ is a blogger who has been around for a while, he is interesting, he has a nice sized audience, he writes about Israel and loves Israel, he is entertaining and thoughtful and will do well with such a project if he is chosen.

So I hereby nominate Lion of Zion to come to Israel on the NBN flight and participate in the conference after blogging about the aliyah experience. I hope if selected he will be able to take advantage of this opportunity.

Being that I can choose a few bloggers (they only qualify that by saying not to go "overboard"), my 2 backup nominees will be Soccer Dad and "Journey to Aliyah".

There has been no Jewish blogger who has done more to help the "jblogosphere" grow than Soccer Dad. Journey to Aliyah is a new blog, but it is written by someone with other blogs and I know that this person will really benefit from such an experience, especially because he has already put himself on a track for aliyah, and we will benefit from his perspective of such an experience.

Good luck to all the contestants, and may the winner do a great job with the responsibility he will be taking on.