We here at Woobox believe in transparency in how we do business, so today we’re pulling back the curtain to show you how one of our most popular features, Winner Picker happens. Contrary to popular belief winners aren’t randomly selected by computers. Here at Woobox we pick winners the old fashion way, by hand. We thought you’d enjoy a look behind the scenes, so here is my interview with our V.P. of Winner Picking, Maximilian Zubarry.
Hi Maximilian, thanks for taking the time to sit down with us today.
Glad to be here, it’s good to get out of the basement for awhile.
You do seem rather pale
Yea, they don’t let us out much but we still have it better than the programmers do…
Anyway, How did you get into Winner Picking?
Picking has always been a passion of mine. As a child it started with my nose, moved on to banjo lessons, and finally a career in picking winners. Nothing can top the sense of satisfaction I get from knowing someone gets to go on a 5-Day Cruise or will receive a 15% off coupon for Dale-Jerry’s Steak Emporium because of my random selection.
How are winners picked?
Currently, selection projectiles are fired at our entrant database surface by our highly skilled winner pickers.
So you throw darts at the wall?
Well…yes, if you want to be reductive about it….
Do you have a technique for how you throw the darts…
Selection projectiles…
Right, sorry, do you have a technique for how you throw the “selection projectiles”
One of our highly trained Winner Pickers is placed blindfolded in the center of a cylindrical room on top of a rotating platform. They are also given a number of selection projectiles based on however many winners the customer has selected. They are rotated for 30 seconds to prevent selection bias and they launch the selection projectile forward, thus selecting a winner.
Have there been other selection methods?
Absolutely, we originally used computers, but in an effort to cut down on electricity usage and better position ourselves in the hand crafted app market, we switched to manual means of selection.
Did you go straight from computers to selection projectiles or did you try other means of choosing?
We started by using turtles given to us from a wonderful homeless turtle placement agency, Turtles without Townhomes, and placing them in the center of the room where they would eventually walk out and land on the winner. This was obviously an incredibly slow process, so we switched to rodents provided to us by Habitat for Hamsters. Unfortunately, we had a hard time keeping the hamsters on a single name so while adorable, we had to scrap the animal initiative.
Any non-dispossessed ways of choosing you have tried?
There’s a very open culture of creativity here at Woobox so our brainstorming sessions have yielded some great ideas. A personal favorite was to drop markers from a hot air balloon but we had problems getting FAA clearance. We’ve also tried various other projectiles to see what stuck but haven’t found any superior options to steel tipped projectiles.
Exciting stuff, any innovations on the horizon?
We’re always looking to stay ahead of the curve and drone technology seems to be hot at the moment so we’ve been doing quite a few experiments with that. We’re also looking at a Retro option for selection where our Winner Pickers utilize Rock, Paper, Scissors. People love throwbacks!
Thank you very much for your time, it was erm, enlightening…
Thank you for selecting me! [chuckles] Just a bit of Winner Picker humor there…