congrats to the winners.
to help the newbies out. How was the best way to discover the answers.
At the risk of never being able to win one of these contests again, here is what I did...
1. Copied all the full size pen images into a folder on my computer, so I could open them all in a Preview window and quickly scroll through them. (Preview is a built-in Mac app - I'm sure there is something similar on Windows).
2. Copied all the User IDs of the pen makers into an Excel spreadsheet & added a column for the matching photo number.
3. Opened a browser window to the IAP Member List page. Clicked on the Search Members button and used copy/paste to enter a user ID from the spreadsheet into the search field (faster than typing).
4. Clicked on the User ID, then Statistics, then All Threads Started by the Member. Then looked for postings to the Show Off Your Pens forum during 2014. Opened each of those threads in a separate tab and checked to see if one of those pens matched the images in the folder by having the browser window & the Preview window open side by side for easy comparison.
5. I also had the contest form open in a Word document window & when I found a match, I would enter the User ID into the word form and the pen number into the appropriate column on the spreadsheet. That made it easy to keep track of which ones I had identified and which ones I hadn't.
6. After every 10 or so pens that I matched, I moved those images out of the folder and reopened the remaining ones with Preview. By trimming the set down this way, it saved time scrolling through all the photo images when I was looking for a match to the SOYP threads.
As a bit of a strategy, I tried to start with User IDs that I don't see very often. Some of the folks whose pens were included in the contest only had a very few postings during 2014 -- that made it a lot easier to find their pens at the start. I saved those users who post frequently until my image folder was down to the last 10 or so photos.
At the start, there was only one pen photo that I was absolutely sure who had made it. There were several photos where I thought I knew the penmaker, but wasn't confident enough to just guess, so I had to search for 48 photos (one I knew & the last one was known by default).
I arranged the Preview, browser, Excel & Word windows on my screen as best I could for rapid switching between apps & even simultaneous viewing of some windows. This was all done on my 13" Apple AirBook screen, so the windows were a little small at time. The large dual-screen setup that I have at work would have been a lot easier.
I hope this is of some help if we have a similar contest next year.
Edgar