The winner of our EE Times Caption Contest!

8/5/2010 9:37 PM EDT

“So I’m still in shock that I won the EE Times Caption contest. I just can’t believe it. I don’t even consider myself a funny person.And then EE Life Editor Karen Field asked me if I’d be willing to write how I did it so you could get some ideas.As I view this contest as my one-hit wonder, I’m not even sure that I am qualified to offer much advice, but I did want to encourage others to try enter a future contest because if I can win – you can too!

I’m originally from New York City and have always loved the New Yorker cartoons.Each time I’m in a doctor’s office, I flip through the magazine just to look at the cartoons.There’s always one that’s sure to make me laugh, so I tried to think about the common denominators in them.(Karen mentioned that one of the winners of the contest wrote a great article about how he did it and I’d suggest that you read that article for good advice.:)

Focus on the human emotion, not the action. Look at the cartoon and try to imagine the situation.What are the people thinking and feeling? What are the expressed but silent emotions?What are they thinking that they wish they could say but etiquette holds them back? Frustrated? Happy? Sad? Angry?

I think captions that articulate the feelings or thoughts, rather than the actions of the people in the cartoon are more likely to win because when readers look at the picture and relate to the caption’s message, they remember, or imagine, when they were in a similar situation. Even in our community of engineers who are stereotypically fact-based and not always driven by emotion, they can relate to the common feelings shared by many people.

So for this contest, I took a break from my day job and looked at this cartoon. I thought about what the engineer might be thinking.My reaction was, ‘Geez, here’s a competent engineer who has 5 guys and gals with clip boards critiquing his work.I bet he’s good at his job and the 5 people looking on don’t know half of what he does.What possible value are they offering? Wouldn’t it be more useful to hire another engineer to help him rather than 5 other people telling him what to do? Why is it that companies choose to throw managers at a problem rather than hiring more people to do the actual work?”

Then I jotted down some ideas for the caption that I thought captured these thoughts.I wrote down 3 options and tweaked them for a bit (my day job involves writing blogs and reviewing marketing copy for our Partner program so I have some practice.) Then I left it alone for 12 hours and picked it up again until I had the one I liked.I ran it by my husband and when he liked it, I submitted the entry.It took me about 30 minutes in total.It was certainly more than I intended to spend on the activity, but once I had clarified the emotion that I was trying to get across; I was motivated to express it clearly.

Hang out with funny people

As I mentioned, I don’t think I’m an especially funny person, but I laugh a lot more than I used too, so I think the recent exposure is improving my humor. I have the most wonderful husband in the whole world and anyone who has known Gary Smith (of EDA fame) for a short time has heard him say a smart-ass comment (probably many.)He attributes them to his Navy experiences and years in semiconductors.We were blessed with a son, Casey, almost 5 years ago and while Casey looks a lot more like me than Gary, he has Gary’s sense of humor.Casey just loves to make people laugh, so we laugh a lot in our household.

I’m still in shock about winning and I think that it’s a great thrill.I’m enjoying my two minutes of fame and look forward to getting my EE Times in the mail so I can see my name in print (a first for this member of the Smith household.It’ll be a nice framed article to put it in my cube. I’m happy to think that some of the humor of people around me is starting to rub off.It’s nice to see that my tendency to focus on people rather than actions, coupled with my improved humor has paid off for a moment.

Go on; try submitting a caption to the next contest.Who cares if you think you’re funny or not? What have you got to lose? You never know, you might be the next one to be surprised that you made a bunch of strangers smile.”

Watch for new caption contest starting next week – and good luck!