Show us and win: Where's your GSA?

As you may have read here a couple of months back, we've been focused recently on the "art of findability" – or the ability to find and locate critical information quickly through the power of enterprise search. At Google, we believe that finding relevant business information through effective search should be as easy as...well, finding a yellow Google Search Appliance in your data center!

In this spirit, we're launching a contest to see how "findable" the Google Search Appliance is in your workplace, and to learn more about how search is making a difference. Two lucky winners will receive an all-expense paid trip to the Google IO conference and have a chance to tell their story during an enterprise search session (if that's not your cup of tea we can also shoot a video). Other prizes include two HTC Dream phones, and a whole host of Google schwag. The only catch: contest rules being what they are, we can only offer these prizes to winners in North America.

Want guidelines? Read on:

1. Take a picture of you and your Google Search Appliance. Pictures can be of just you, or of your whole workgroup, as long as you're near your GSA. Yes, the GSA has to be in the picture. Have fun and be as original as possible! Oh, but make sure that this is in keeping with company guidelines – in other words, get the right "sign offs" first.

2. Submit your GSA story. Read the rules , then fill out the form to describe how your GSA has impacted your business. What do your users do better with the power of search? How much time is your IT team saving? What's easy about working with the GSA?

3. The GSA team will convene. We'll look at your pictures and read your stories, and judge on both – 50% on the quality and uniqueness of your picture (look here for inspiration!), and 50% on what you say in your story.

Come on! Enter the contest. Don't yet own a Google Search Appliance? Click here to learn more. We'll share the news here when we announce our winners, so stay tuned. We look forward to hearing your stories and seeing your GSA.

Contest Deadline: March 31, 2009. Winners will be announced on April 17.

Posted by David Kim, Google Enterprise Team Member and Avid Appliance Photographer