Miguel Krippahl has been blogging about ArchiCAD since October 2006. Back then I’d been using ArchiCAD for only 9 months. Miguel has decided that after blogging for so long, the BIMx competition is a turning point. If his readers don’t help him win by liking his entry, he’s going to stop blogging. If no one is willing to make the gesture, then his blog isn’t having a significant impact on the community and he’ll spend his time focusing on other endeavors. You can read his explanations here: Architruques (or here in the original Portuguese).

Our ArchiCAD community is not huge. There are not enough active bloggers talking about how we use ArchiCAD on a day to day basis. We can not afford to lose any. While I don’t agree with Miguel’s tactic of “if I don’t win, I’m done” (I prefer the carrot over the stick), I completely understand where he’s coming from. When I entered the competition, I was VERY optimistic about winning. I know I have a large, grateful readership and a ton of friends, family and followers on Facebook. And my BIMx entry was full of zombies! Who doesn’t love zombies? I assumed that if I could get 10% of my readers over the next two weeks and 10% of my facebook contacts to like my entry, I’d easily rocket up to 200 to 300 likes. That seemed like a winning range. And in fact within 30 minutes of posting my entry, I had 14 likes. It was very exciting. I prepared my 50 likes reward post, expecting to post it when I woke up the next morning–and I was even a little nervous that I wouldn’t have time to prepare my 100 likes reward post. Turns out the following morning I only had 18 likes. As we approach the one week mark, my total likes is a humble 58 (which is closer to 3-4% of my traffic). Needless to say, that was not what I was expecting…

I would love to win this competition. An iPad 2 would be an awesome treat and it’d be nice to see the likes pour in, as I had assumed and hoped they would. However I started Shoegnome not to grab all the glory, but to help grow the community and make us all better. Come November 1st when the voting is over, I’ll still be blogging regardless of the outcome. After all, this is my motto:

A poor cobbler had enough leather for one pair of shoes. He left it out overnight and returned to find shoes so beautiful a customer paid him double their price.

The cobbler, thinking carefully, reinvested the money and learned to make beautiful shoes. His reputation grew and he prospered thereafter.

Take a moment and let Miguel know the community needs more bloggers, not less, by liking his entry.
Here’s the link.

And while you’re at it, here’s another entry that could use some more likes.

Thank you.