Yes, the time is once again almost upon us: The Annual DC Rainmaker Giveaway Extravaganza. Albeit slightly later in the summer season than years’ past – but worry not, I’m not skipping it!
Next Tuesday (August 4th) starting at exactly 12:00AM Eastern (0600 CET/CEST) the pinnacle of sports technology giveaway awesomeness will commence…again.
Last year the numbers were huge – both in entrants as well as prizes. Thousands of dollars in gadgets were given away to people everywhere on this little blue marble (everyone is welcome). Here’s a refresher set of posts for all the craziness that went down last year. But as with every previous year, I aim to make it bigger and better. Bigger prizes, worth more. Cause as always, bigger is definitely better. The conversation with Clever Training roughly went: “How can we giveaway even more stuff?”. To which I accepted the challenge and went about planning next Tuesday (including feeding the web servers’ meters a bit extra for next week).
Like last year I’ll be giving something new away every 2 hours. This means that every two hours a new giveaway starts and the previous one closes (i.e. 12:00AM, 2:00AM, etc…). The entry period will only be open for two hours for each giveaway. So be sure to plan your entire existence on Tuesday around being able to enter during that two hour period for each giveaway.
If you aren’t sure how to convert your time zone to Eastern time, you can use this little tool to figure it out. Though, it doesn’t really matter as long as you know what time to start in your country.
So if you need to barricade yourself in the pantry for 24 hours to ensure proper attention to entry periods, that’s totally acceptable. Just do what you need to do!
Cause yup…it’s gonna be awesome…again.
Note that the giveaways will be announced promptly on Twitter – so that may be easiest for those that are following along there!
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Up all night, here I come! Woot!
I prefer this tool:
link to timebie.com
Work? Shmerk!
Ahh!! Finally I’ll be checking dcrainmaker.com every 30 minutes for something! Rules rules? Europeans too?
Yup, anywhere globally!
Sandro: this is the first time you’ve checked dcrainmaker.com every 30 mins? A few of us have this affliction regardless of whether there’s a give away or not
no, I meant that I would be checking every 30 minutes, as usual lately, but now with a better purpose than hoping the Epix review would be published ;)
Talking about that, eventually I decided to pull the trigger and order one, will give my impressions once I get it.
My first day of the holidays. I beat my wife will be real happy having me refreshing dcrainmaker.com on my laptop on the beach.
No reason to beat your wife *scnr* :)
Ups, sorry, not my language. I meant “I bet my wife” :)
Just tell her it’s an easy way to get you your birthday present this year – for free! She’ll be fighting you for that laptop ;)
Top tip for East Coaster’s: Stay up till midnight, do your first entry, sleep till 3:50, enter both the 2 am and 4 am contests, then just wake up before 8 am to enter the 6 am one, and you’ve gotten nearly eight hours of sleep and entered every contest so far!
Love this Ray!
Good plan Chris, adapted for use in the UK,
Can’t speak for everyone here but I’m always up by 05:00 so the start is not a problem for me.
Go to bed Tuesday night at 23:05 and wake Wednesday morning at 02:50 to enter the last two slots.
good luck
isn’t 12:00AM Eastern (0600 CET/CEST) 5am in GMT?
I though 12AM eastern is midday, not midnight.
maybe i have been wrong all these years.
Most Americans/Canadians would refer to 00:00 as 12:00AM – hence the usage there. Whereas noon would be 12:00PM.
so 06:00 CEST is the Wednesday then?
Rob (above) has got me confused with his 02:50 Wednesday morning UK time.
Arghh… Heading to the middle of nowhere without any data acess.
I follow and cross my fingers :D Do we have to do somthing to participate?
Just post a comment in the giveaway item page (when announced)
Oh how I hope the random number generator is finally kind to me!
Alarm clock is set and I’m looking forward to it!!
I was crushed last year when I didn’t win anything. So much so, I basically gave up on working out. Here’s hoping to getting back into it.
Thanks in advance for all my new goodies!
If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t even know about. Completely slipped my mind.
I hate it when life get’s in the way.
Guys and ladies, you can get your sleep, it’s all me this year, I’ve hacked the random number generator ?
Just kidding, I can’t hack an alarm clock ,lol
I sure hope to win something this time.
Cool website and lots of good information about technology. But I gotta say that visiting here has cost me a lot of money on tech goodies. Thanks Ray!
So Great! Thank you, Ray!
Slightly off topic…are you going to Outdoor Retailer, I know the starting dates of the show are roughly at the tail end of the giveaway. I know you can’t tell us what’s coming up with announcements, but i’m wondering if there will be anything new from the big boys.
Nah, not bothering to go this year. Just don’t expect much in the way of new products. I believe only Timex announced new stuff there last year.
The giveaway timing was mostly because I had wanted to do it a week earlier, but being on the small boat for a week had killed any hope of doing all the prep work needed for it.
Just practicing
lol at A-Aron Cowan
in it to win it…
By the way, the same procedure as last year, Ray?
Ray: The same procedure as every year, guys!
(1) refresh DCR page time_xx:58 & comment (item y) …. wait 3to4 minutes …. time_(xx+1):03 refresh & comment (item y+1)
(2) wait / go back to sleep for 3h_50min :D
repeat steps until 24hours are over :)
hoping this year’s giveaway post will outnumber the huge amount of comments of last year’s one. DCR brilliant work on this blog deserves it.
(speaking of which, I must carefully check not to post my comments under 2014 section. it could slightly lower my chances of grabbing something… :) )
OK,
I’m ready, alarm set!!!
Is there any estimation of how many participant for each competition? I mean, what are the odds…?
ok, I was bored, so:… last year, on average 1 in 3296 :)
So it basically means: only one comment allowed per item, right? But will there be an accompanying comment thread where we can vent all our excitement? I’ll be giddy as a schoolgirl all day, I suspect ;)
Yup, correct.
Oh, another question – I just informed my brother about the Extravaganza, but I wondered: is it one entry per email address, or per home (ip-)address? Because it would be nice to give his wife and kids a chance as well, but I can imagine you wanting to rule out people creating 300 hotmail addresses from their home to improve their odds.
It’s one entry per person per giveaway (so each in your family can enter once every two hours). Just ensure each person has a unique e-mail address.
I do some additional checking behind the scenes to weed out the 300 entries by the same person (seriously, it happens each year), that keeps out casual cheaters.
Cool, thanks for the quick reply, I’ll tell them :)
Who needs sleep? :-)
Can’t wait!!!
ALL NIGHTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That will be day to of employment at a large sports brand! :O I’m sure they’ll approve when I explain the circumstances….
Great stuff DC !!
Awesome!
I hope i find some good access to Internet to take a part in this craziness! Thank you, Ray!
One day you will have to explain how do you manage to keep such a good webpage and still have a private life with lot of sport.
Keep the good trend folk
Did you notice that Ray is often only in the pictures in little pieces (arms, wrists, ancles etc)? He has the testing cunningly outsourced to under paid school kids while he is cup cakering, showing his face only incidentally between munches. Yup. I’m sure of it.
Wait, I’m supposed to pay them?
Well, if they’re young enough, they would only require… let’s say.. free cupcakes? Which kind of would explain the need for the CupCakery. Thomas may be on to something. Or he’s just ‘on something’, of course, a certain special flavor of cupcake, perhaps?
Awesome!
Ray,
I have a 5 mile tempo on Wednesday, and if it doesn’t go well it’s your fault. Just saying.
*sniff, sniff*
Why twitter? Twitter is the downfall of intelligent life on this planet. :(
I’m new to this, so…how exactly DO we enter our name in these great giveaways? Thanks
Ow yeah! Looking forward to it!
Paris hour? It starts at 12:00am in paris?
France follows CEST, so it’s starting 6 am in Paris time
Sounds great!!!
Can’t wait:D
it’ll be my first time – be gentle ;)
Testing for Tuesday. Can’t wait, as always.
Wow it is like Xmas for sport tech.
This is epic!! Congrats to Ray for all these effort, and thank you so much!!! It will be superfun!!!
Marked this event within the calendar :-) Many thanks for your other posts and tests!
Good luck, everyone!!! Thank you, Ray and Clever!
1-2 testing
cool! bring it on!
Testing
Locked in
So it’s a 5am gmt start? This is my first time. I can feel the pressure already ?
Looking forward to this. Hope I finally get some hardware. :)
In it to win it !!!!
WOOOOOhoOOOOOO!! I’m up for the marathon
Excellent!
Yoohoo~!!!
Bushido Smart please….from 4-6pm
Practice post! Just making sure it’s working. I need to win a power meter!
Will be there :-) Thanks Ray!
This should go on all month with a new product every day and each give away lasting for 24 hours. That way I could get my name into each drawing. As it is, I’m going to miss a few. Bummer!
I’m ready!
So this Tuesday will be night out. Marked calendar as PTO.
You have to enter to be lucky.
Getting ready for Tuesday!
Coffee brewing already……
Alarms set, bring it on! Great idea, thank you:-)
I am looking forward to participate! ;)
Thanks for all the guidance!
My brother-in-law’s pulsometer got broken last month and he’s looking for a new one… If I’m lucky enough, he gets the gear and I get the story to tell! :-D
Greetings from Spain!
I’m definitely on this 24hr bus!!!
No sleep, plenty gain….
Let´s go!
Cool! Looking forward to it!
Also testing.
Wow, sounds great!
test :)
Test
Test
Getting close to giveaway….
fingers crossed! Eyes down, look in!
check check….is this thing on?
Testing
It’s of, but it will be on soon!
8 hrs until game time.
My plan is to sleep through the first 3. Hope to remember a couple times during the day. Then get pissed off when I missed entering for the thing I really wanted. then, enter for something I already have.
So exited!
Bring it on!
Testing…
1 2 3 …
Excited… ?
getting ready… :)
Can’t wait
Can’t wait!!!
Sooo close now ….
Come on……
I guess we will all be useless tomorrow at work.
Just checking my post-making capabilities prior to the big day!
Can’t wait!
Looking forward to seeing what the goods look like this year!
A bit early but I’m psyched. Though I won’t make all of em them due to work.
Can’t wait
Almost there!
The time is near!
Come on… I am ready…
Had to see if this works.
Testing for the big day!!
Everybody GOPRO!!
I love GoPro
GoPro = fondo movie
Thank you DC
GoPro? :-D Cool!
I want it!
GoPro would be nice :p
DcRainMaker on fire)
I would love this. Please!
Woo hoo
I like it
I like it too
Vamos que nos vamos…
What’s the 10am-12noon raffle???
Yes please
I hope I will get lucky and win some goodies.
I want garmin
I think it’s my turn now!
Garmin gets me going!
Cant wait