Network Computing Magazine hosts an annual “Best of Interop” awards program at the Interop Las Vegas show in the spring for the best new products offered by exhibitors at the show. This really helps the casual networking specialist sort through the hundred of exhibitors and products offered.

Vibrant noticed an important category missing in the awards though and took it upon ourselves to dig up the best “Schwag” or “Tchotchkes” that we could find on the Interop expo floor. I’m really not sure how this was previously overlooked!

Please take a look at the three finalists below and vote for your favorite.

(apologies for the audio in these clips… the show floor was pretty loud and our external mic didn’t work out)

Extreme Networks Purple Mug

These mugs were everywhere during the Interop Pub Crawl, filled with cold beverages and vividly purple. Extreme Networks had an incredible presence at the show and these mugs that changed color when cold were one of several brilliant concepts in their arsenal. Extreme also had a preacher and gospel singers at their booth as well as a “purple people” lounge. In the video below, Dan Sibille, Sr. Director of Channel Sales & Operations speaks with me about why their mug should win the award.

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Raptor Networks Bottle Opener

Bottle openers that look like a menacing raptor, nice. Raptor Networks had a fun booth too with a giant raptor sculpture out front. I spoke with CFO Bob Van Leyen about their prospects of winning (and their mascot “Rappy”).

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Solarwinds Rubik’s Cube

This certainly isn’t the first time that an exhibitor has given away a Rubik’s cube and as a matter of fact, another vendor was handing them out at Interop. What made the Solarwinds offering impressive was that they also had a guy at their booth who could solve the cube in 20-30 seconds. Check it out.

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Tchotchke Challenge

While not an entrant in the contest, no article about tchotchkes at Interop could be complete without mentioning this terrific idea. The Tchotchke Challenge was a charitable endeavor by Secure Computing where if they were able to fill a chest with Interop giveaways that they would give out $10,000 to the Children’s Heart Foundation.  They will also repurpose the schwag items as charitable give-aways.

What is a Twitter hunt?

It’s a simple treasure hunt, except the clues are given out via Twitter. In our case, we’ll be giving out $200 in chips to the person who can find Vibrant’s own Lindsi Gish somewhere within Interop Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center.

Between 2 and 4PM on Wednesday, May 23rd, clues will be given out every 10-15 minutes via Vibrant’s Twitter profile (www.twitter.com/vibrant) regarding the profile and location of Lindsi. The first one to find her wins.

What is Interop?

Interop is a huge networking (hardware, software, security) conference held this week in Las Vegas with over 18,000 attendees expected. Vibrant will be there meeting current and prospective clients who are interested in used Cisco, Juniper, Marconi and so on which we offer at up to 90% off list. If you’re there, participate in the Twitter Hunt and stop by our booth #1878.

Do I have to “friend” Vibrant to play?

The updates or “tweets” will display on our profile if you refresh it so you shouldn’t need to “friend” Vibrant or even be a member of Twitter to play. You may want to do so though because then you could get the updates sent directly to your cell phone or IM instead of constantly refreshing our profile.

What inspired you to do this?

A local Twitter user, Aric McKeown, has been holding his own social Twitter hunts monthly in the Twin Cities which he brilliantly calls the “Least Dangerous Game.” (Yes, inspired by the 1924 short story, The Most Dangerous Game, by Richard Connell.)

Should you participate?

If you’re at Interop and would like to have some fun and maybe win something to gamble with… Why not?

www.twitter.com/vibrant

To the winners of the 2006 SysAdmin of the Year award, Congratulations!

In the immortal words of Strongbad:

“Now that’s what I’m talking about, that was amazing! I mean.. you… I mean … I’m buying you a pizza!”

- As told to The Cheat after he created the Everybody to the Limit / Fhqwhgads video.

So if any of the winners, runners-up and honorable mention sysadmins are interested, contact us with your favorite local pizza joint and address and we’ll send you a gift certificate. Hopefully your employers reward you with some real bonuses though (see cash/money).

Winners:

Grand Prize: Michael Beck, Emerging Technologies Group

First Place: Sean Thomas, True Prism Technologies

Runners-up: Darren Barry, Micah Anderson, Dawn Lovell

Honorable Mention: Mike Jennings, Nik Keating, Russ Steffen, Denis Roy, Justin Hartwell

Contest Rules: http://www.sysadminoftheyear.com/rules

Notes:

• I’m really surprised Sean Thomas didn’t win.  I mean, he risked his life to save a RAID array from a burning datacenter and then worked around the clock to get his company back up and running. Plus, he looks like he rocks out, especially in his bits and bytes t-shirt.
• All entrants in the original contest had to agree to allowing follow-up sales calls by Splunk representatives (the contest’s sponsor). This is like signing up for a magazine, because you know you’re gonna get barraged with marketing calls for years to come. I can assure all of the winners that the pizza won’t come with a side of cold-call coleslaw. (That doesn’t make any sense, but neither cold-calls nor coleslaw go well with ‘za.)
• I never like contests that have a “grand prize” and a “first place” winner. In my mind, the first place winner should get the grand prize. Thats how it was done on Bozo’s Grand Prize Game after all.

“I’m sad that I didn’t get the grand prize…”