Sears Award Voting Schedule

Voting for the 2011 Sears Award will take place 6-9 May 2011. That's Friday through Monday. I am conducting the vote this year over a weekend for those who might be traveling. I am hoping to catch those on travel at home on at least one side of the weekend. If you are on travel during the vote, you might want to pay attention to the blog.

We have three candidates for the Sears Award this year. Each candidate is highly distinguished and deserving of the Sears Award. We vote, however, because only one can receive the award. Voting for the Sears Award is the most important thing we do as a community each year. Please plan to vote.

I will post the candidate's biographies on the blog on Thursday, and I will send them out by email on Friday. In past years I edited the biographies to make them all the same length to encourage readability. I took out hyperbole and superlatives. I tried to make them read like biographies, as opposed to Legion of Merit citations. I got flak from several colleagues over the years because of my edits. Kind of, "I would have received the award if only you had let me represent myself." You should know that Admirals, all of whom have their biographies published on the web, are edited to the same standards I used.

So this year I told the nominees that I would not edit them. I told them that I would not touch their prose, not even to correct grammar or misspellings. You will read exactly what they submitted to me. While in the past I tried to level the playing field, this year you will be able to take into account how they want to represent themselves. You are free to draw your own conclusions.

More tomorrow on voting rules and how the vote will be conducted.