Contributor Connect

The Yahoo! Contributor Network community is growing every day. In 2011, we published more original content than ever. Our contributors shared first-person news stories; incisive commentary; fan perspectives on every major sport; passionate responses to television, film, and celebrity culture; and practical advice about nearly every subject imaginable. 

2011 was also a year of evolution. Through our launch of Yahoo! Voices and a revision of our Submission Guidelines, we're providing an enhanced platform where unique, powerful voices connect with Yahoo!'s audience of millions.  

Our three winners are among the strongest and most distinct voices in our contributor community. It's with great pride that we present our Outstanding Contributors of the Year!

And the winners are...
 

Brad Sylvester, Outstanding Contributor of the Year

Attempt to define Brad Sylvester at your own risk. Is he a consumer electronics expert? A New Hampshire modern homesteader and poultry expert? An environmentalist commentator? An expert on outer space? An incredibly skillful interviewer? All of the above, as it turns out, and his voice remains authoritative and captivating throughout a library of content touching on all of these topics and more.

Brad is also no stranger to success on YCN. A piece on eco-tourism in the Galapagos Islands earned him a People's Media Award in 2009. He's a Featured Pets and Green Contributor and an accomplished newswriter. Our favorite 2011 gems from Brad's library include:

An Astronaut's Perspective of Earth (Yahoo! News)
Q&A: Coming of Age in Moammar Gadhafi's Libya  (Yahoo! News)
How to Catch and Hold a Dragonfly (Yahoo! Voices)
Interviews with former NASA chief and Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 (Yahoo! News)

We asked all of our honorees to reflect on this win in a brief “speech.” This is what Brad had to say: 

I consider winning the Contributor of the Year Award at the Yahoo! Contributor Network to be a very special honor, because I know a number of very fine writers who were also eligible for the award. The very best writers here cover an amazing variety of topics with an incredible array of styles, but they all have one thing in common:

Without regard to our spouses or significant others, we all share an abiding love of the English language. We nurture passionate affairs with the written word. In other words, we love to write.

For me and, I’m sure, many others who write at the Yahoo! Contributor Network, being a professional writer is quite literally a dream job. It’s one of those careers that, as a kid, I placed in the same romanticized category as being an astronaut, a major league baseball player, or a brain surgeon. Like all of those professions, making a living as a writer requires much more hard work than I ever imagined.

I won’t say it takes a village, but having a supportive and talented community of writers like those I’ve found here has certainly been a big part of any success I have achieved.

***

Kelly Herdrich, Outstanding Contributor of the Year

If you need parenting advice, project ideas for your family, a laugh, or even just some sympathy for your parenting dilemmas, Kelly Herdrich's library of content may well be your first stop. Kelly is a mother of three who fills any time left over after parenting with knitting-pattern design, world travel, and writing for publications including six Yahoo! websites. Kelly has also proven her versatility by creating content for numerous partners over the years, consistently exceeding both our editors' and our partners' expectations.  Even better, she's funny and enormously likable. It's easy to see why she received so many nominations from contributors and editors that our scrolling fingers got sore just reading through all of Kelly's glowing endorsements.

Kelly shares her voice as a Featured Contributor in three categories: Lifestyle, Travel, and Health & Wellness. Her insights have helped parents around the world. It's hard to see how she fits anything else in, between prolific writing and attentive parenting, but she manages: One of her recent knitting patterns was replicated hundreds of times, and she just completed her first novel. We laughed, smiled, and empathized while reading staff and community favorites from Kelly's library, like...

5 iPhone Apps that Make Me a Better Mother (Yahoo! Voices)
I’m a hot dogs and chicken nuggets mom (and I’m not ashamed to admit it) (Yahoo! Shine)
The Step-by-step Guide to Bribing Your Kids (Yahoo! Voices)

More from Kelly, in her own words:

Voice Counts

When I heard the news that I was receiving one of the 2011 Outstanding Contributor of the Year awards, I was truly shocked.  I get excited every year to see which contributors and content the YCN community and staff think exemplify the best of the best.  I never thought I would be one of them.

I joined Associated Content in 2007. I had just moved overseas. I was struggling with caring for two young children, making time for myself, and missing my extended family. I hadn’t written a word in years. It showed. At the time, I had the voice, but not the know-how of web writing.  Down the line, I perfected the web writing, but lost my voice.  2011 is truly the year that I feel I got the two together and came into my own as a writer.  Now, I hope that my readers hear me and my voice no matter what it is I’m writing about.

I’m truly honored to receive this award.  Thanks to all of you in the community, and to my husband and daughters who give me the time to write … even when they’re banging on the door for my attention.

***

Jared Spurbeck, Outstanding Contributor of the Year

Jared is a Featured Technology Contributor so savvy that when we talk about hot new gadgets around the Yahoo! Contributor Network office, you'll often hear the words "I'll reserve judgment until I see Jared's review." And Jared knows how to weave his expertise into authoritative content on the Occupy Wall Street movement, the legacy of Steve Jobs, and many other topics that touch on tech while remaining readable for those who aren't gadget aficionados. His passion for open-source software informs his content, but Jared is able to fairly evaluate any product, from the Linux/Ubuntu family to PCs to Macs.

As a Yahoo! contributor, Jared has published to Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! News, and Yahoo! Shopping. Combine his depth of knowledge with a hefty dose of humor and creativity, and you've got a recipe for content that's both fun and useful. He'll teach you how to buy devices and software, but he'll also make you laugh and think. Among the pieces we loved:

Like Open-Source Software, Here's How Occupy Wall Street Will Be Co-Opted (Yahoo! News)
First Person: Steve Jobs Dropped Out of College and Changed My World (Yahoo! News)
Thanksgiving Dinner with the '1 Percent' (Yahoo! News)

Jared, according to Jared:

When I started writing for what was then Associated Content, I had major depression and serious emotional issues, partly because of my disability. I knew I wanted to write for a living, but I didn’t know where or how, or who would even want to read it.

Being paid for each article helped motivate me to keep going. So did looking at page view counts and seeing how many people read each article. And while it was a tremendous boost to my self-esteem to see people enjoying my fiction elsewhere, it wasn’t until I was given a Yahoo! News beat that I realized I could make writing into a career. Not sometime later, but now. I was shocked to hear that I’d received this award, but also grateful and awed at how far I’d come. After a lifetime of feeling inadequate, it means a lot to me.

I feel privileged to be able to reach Yahoo!’s audience with my writing, and I hope to be able to do so for some time to come.

*****

Brad, Kelly, and Jared aren't the only contributors getting recognition for their great work in 2011. If you were one of our Top 1000 page view earners in 2011, you'll soon get a new Top 100 or Top 1000 badge on your contributor profile. If you made the cut, you'll receive a private message before the end of the day.

Congratulations once again to our Outstanding Contributors of the Year! Each winner will receive a $1,500 prize, a limited-edition profile badge, and the highest-caliber bragging rights our platform can offer.