Davao City will be celebrating her 75th Araw ng Dabaw festival in the middle of March 2012.

Here are the mechanics covering the competition:

1. The 75th Araw ng Dabaw BLOG COMPETITION is open to all Dabawenyo bloggers. Registration will commence on the kick-off event at SM City Davao, 11 February 2012, at 1:00pm.
2. Each participant can only submit 1 blog entry. In the event that more than 1 entry is submitted, only the latest entry will be considered. The blog can be published in any blog website. The participant is required to send an email to this address after the blog post has been published. The email should contain the following:
   • Subject : Official Entry to 75th Araw ng Dabaw Blog Competition
   • Content : URL of the Blog Entry and Name of Participant
3. The blog article should be written guided by the theme of the current Davao Tourism Campaign, “Davao : Life Is Here!”. The blog entries should be tagged with the following keywords: Davao, Araw ng Dabaw, Davao Life is here, Davao Tourism, and Araw ng Dabaw Blog Competition. The following footer is compulsory to identify it as a blog entry:
   <p style="text-align:center;"><img src="http://davaotourism.com/wp-content/themes/DavaoCTOO/images/ctoologo.jpg" alt="Davao life is here" /><br /><strong>Submitted as an entry to the 75th Araw ng Dabaw Blog Competition</strong></p> <p>
4. The blog can be written in English or Tagalog or Cebuano or a combination of the three.
5. The competition will start on 11 February 2012 and will end at midnight of 29 February 2012. Winners will be announced on 13 March 2012 during the Mayor & Vice-Mayor’s Appreciation program.
6. The blog entry must have a minimum of 400 words and a maximum of 1,000 words. Images can be added to accentuate the blog article.
7. The blog entry, including accompanying images, must not in any way violate any intellectual property right. Anyone found to have violated this right in his/her blog entry will automatically be disqualified and will be required to delete the blog article.
8. The blog must have a feedback/comment module. Part of the criteria for judging is the total number of unique feedback/comments received by the blog article.
9. The decision of the board of judges is deemed final.
10. All blog entries shall become the property of Duaw Davao Festivals Foundation,Inc. As such, the foundation has the right to copy, adapt, transmit, distribute, publish, and display the blog entries in part or as a whole.
11. Blog entries must always be in published mode in the duration of the competition.
12. The criteria for judging are as follows:

    Relevance to the theme:	40%
    Content:	25%
    Organization, Flow of Thought, “Easy Reading”:	25%
    Unique Count of Comments & Feedback received:	10%

13. Winners will receive the following:

    1st Prize	₱20,000
    2nd Prize	₱15,000
    3rd Prize	₱10,000
    Consolation Prizes (5)	₱5,000 each

14. The Duaw Davao Festivals Foundation and the City Government of Davao or any of the institutions/agencies involved in the implementation of the Blog Competition shall not be held liable for any copyright infringement committed by the participant. Any other negative results coming from the participant’s failure to follow the rules and regulations will not be the responsibility of the foundation.
15. Duaw Davao Festivals Foundation employees are not eligible to participate in the competition.
16. All inquiries should be addressed to Duaw Davao Festivals Foundation. Please call 286-4103 or email them here.

(Now, item #10 above might raise a few eyebrows — including mine — because blog entries, being published in the bloggers’ sites, are naturally owned by the bloggers. Maybe what the contest organizers should have stated was that they reserve the right to make use of the blog competition entries without the need for prior consent from the bloggers. But, that’s OK. I’m sure this blog competition is being conducted in good faith.)

Bloggers of Davao! Let’s support this initiative by our city government to promote tourism and business. We should be happy that more and more people in the administration are becoming aware of the power of our voices.

I’d gotten tired of the old one already, although it did serve me well. Truth is, when I chose that old theme, it was simply meant to be temporary while I hunted around for a more suitable one. But my other blogs got more attention from me then, and that’s why that old theme stuck with Blogie Blog for quite some time.

The new WordPress theme that you see now, called Angel, is from Jai Nischal Verma of Blog Oh! Blog. He has quite a number of awesome packages for your WP installation. My favorite blog, Ang Dabawenyo, uses one of their themes.

Speaking of this WP theme designer, Jai is running a “mega contest” for bloggers. He’s giving away 10 Super Premium WordPress Themes, worth a total of $700! All you have to do to join this blogging contest is subscribe to his RSS feed, and post an entry about the contest on your own blog (make sure to trackback to his contest post). Good luck!!

If you’re the type who wants more out of your whole WordPress experience, some of the themes Jai is offering in this contest are really worth having. I happen to have one of his premium themes, but I’m not using it yet… I’m saving it for a future blog project.

So, how do you like my new blog design?