THE CISCO SUCCESS PLAYBOOK

Below are the four elements to creating success as stated in the Wall Street Journal article: Silicon Valley Survivor

• “Be realistic”
• “Assess your situation”
• “Get ready for the upturn”
• “Get closer to your customers”

For the full details on each, visit the full article on the WSJ website.

Here are three unwritten rules to add to the four above.

• “Watch the stock market.”
• “Always have more cash, not less.”
• “Be aggressive.”

Again, these are from the article linked above. It is one thing to talk about these rules and quite another to have such strong execution on them. Cisco has successfully acquired several billion dollar businesses and not missed a beat in doing so. They have been a nimble M&A machine.

SHORTY AWARDS GONE WRONG?

The images above are screen shots from after nominations concluded. Below is a partial list of Shorty Awards rules. At the end of the nominations the votes will be counted and the top five candidates will move on to the finals. In the case of a tie, in nominations, a sixth nominee will be included.

There were no ties between any of the top six contestants. This being the case, only the top five nominees are eligible in the finals per rules set out before the competition. Inexplicably, the startups category somehow had six contestants move into the final round. 

Rules are from http://shortyawards.com/about/ and retrieved on Monday January 26, 2009.

How do the finals work?
The five (or in one case of a tie, six) people with the most nominations in each official category have gone on to the final voting round.
All finalists are encouraged to register ASAP to get free guaranteed admission to the awards ceremony and to be notified if they win.
The people with the most votes in their category will be the winner of the Shorty Award in that category.
The finals round lasts from Monday, January 12 through Friday, January 23 at midnight (Pacific time).
The Shorty Awards' 26 winners will be offered $1,000 grants to travel to New York and attend the awards ceremony, thanks to support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Winners must attend the event to claim the grant.
We will do a final audit for spam, hanging chads, and other shenanigans, before announcing the winners.
Follow @shortynews or join the mailing list for updates.

Ed: Color and bold added to aid the reader.

The contestant @hanniversary had 23 votes in nominations originally. You can see that Shorty Awards has recently changed the nominations results [past few days]. They removed 2 votes from @orgsync to make it appear that @hanniversary was #5. @orgsync had 24 votes in nominations [see screen shots above]. They appear to be covering their tracks as to why an ineligible nominee was allowed into the finals in the startup category.

QUESTIONS:

• Why were the nomination numbers not accurate before finals voting started?
• Why were the vote numbers for @orgsync changed?
• If the numbers for @orgsync were wrong and only recently noted, how did nominee number six [@hanniversary] make it into finals? 

These questions, left unanswered, undermine the integrity and fairness of the entire process known as the Shorty Awards.