Our creative idea – ‘The America’s Fastest Geek’ competition – pitted contestants against each other and the clock to assemble and boot up a fully functioning PC from its basic working components (memory, hard disks, CD ROM drives, etc.) and then get it browsing the ExtremeTech home page.

To generate excitement and interest in the event, CooperKatz placed a story on the MSNBC Web site the week before the competition. As a result, hundreds of eager IT network administrators, software programmers, developers and product engineers lined up over the two days to get a shot at the title and its grand prize – a custom-designed, top-of-the-line, chrome-plated PC.

The contest drew huge crowds of spectators (at times 20-deep) and captured more attention than virtually any other exhibitor at the show. The event also garnered widespread broadcast, print and online coverage, including the New York Post, MSNBC.com (three separate stories), AP, CNBC, UPN New York, FOX News Channel, NY1, Tech TV and dozens of local television stations via b-roll we shot during the two-day event and distributed nationally. The launch event helped the site register four million page views in its first month.