Ladies and Gentlemen. Boys and Girls. Wow. What a month of review writing that was!

We have been completely taken back by the number of reviews entered into the Speak Up Sydney competiton. And not only the number of reviews, but the quality too. We cannot start to describe how happy we are with the participation from Sydney-siders for this initiative. It has been superb. We’ve received some great coverage, great feedback and more importantly some great support from people like you. And without forgetting the obvious, we’ve learnt a great deal about some of the local businesses we did and didn’t know about. We hope you have too!

Whilst we launched this initiative with a competition, we hope that you will continue to submit your reviews into RAYV. The more experiences, advice and recommendations you can share with your fellow Sydney-siders the stronger this city will become. We also hope to see a shift in business standards and service quality through the voice of the locals.

So, I’m sure you are all dieing to know who’s won? Good question! We don’t know ourselves yet. The competition deadline was yesterday (midnight) and we now have the task of going through thousands of reviews to pick out the best.

We’ll then be getting together with our sponsors and deciding who the lucky winners will be.

We’ll be announcing the winners on this site on Thursday 8th May (next week). All winners will also be notified by email.

The overall winner of Speak Up Sydney 2008 will be announced on Wednesday 14th May at the Speak Up Sydney party. What a great surprise for someone that will be!

On the night we’ll also be awarding another TWO prizes. One for the best review, judged by everyone at the Speak Up Sydney party, and we’ll also be awarding a great prize for one lucky person just for turning up to the party. This will be held as a raffle.

The first RSVP invite email was distributed last week. And another will be sent out next week. If you can’t wait that long and want to RSVP now - visit the RSVP page here.

This is by no means the end of Speak Up Sydney. It is just the beginning. We’ll be working very closely with RAYV on heaps of new initiatives for Sydney-siders and local businesses. We also hope to be doing a lot more work with our sponsors in the future.

Your feedback and suggestions as to what you would like to see are as always very welcome.

For now, keep your eyes peeled over on RAYV as the guys are planning on rolling out quite a few new additions to the site to help you experience and discover a ‘new’ Sydney.

Keep on reviewing!
The Speak Up Sydney Team.

To add to the pot of tasty goodies up for grabs - Time Out Sydney will now be publishing the winning review in their weekly magazine. Woo hoo! You might be famous! Imagine that, you could go down to the local paper shop and buy a Time Out with *your* review published in it. And you could use the $5,000 you’ve just won to buy it! OK, so we’ll probably give you a free copy of the magazine when you’re published - but you get the point.

So, even more reason to now enter. Reviews are coming in thick and fast. It seems you’re all keen diners that’s for sure. ‘Restaurants’ is definitely the most popular category at the moment. Remember, there’s loads more categories over on RAYV boys and girls. We’re interested to hear your views across a variety of businesses.

Hints & Tips #1
Remember that we’re giving away prizes for the best review per category so look for the categories where there’s the least reviews at the moment and your chances of winning will dramatically increase.

Good luck and keep on reviewing. We’re really enjoying reading about your experiences and recommendations.

Hey everyone, the Speak Up Syndey commercial is now up and doing the rounds on the usual suspects such as You Tube, Facebook, My Space etc.

If you haven’t already seen it check it out on our video page here.

Big thanks to Disclaimer Productions for filmimg and editing of the video and of course all of the local friendly business owners of Glebe and Balmain (where the commercial was shot) for letting us use their premises.

Fellow Sydney-siders, Speak Up Sydney has arrived.

You know, people seem to think that other people are really in the *know* about this town, when in fact those people who you think are in the know are actually sitting there thinking someone else (probably you) is the know.

Wow, there’s a lot of ‘people in the know’ apparently.

So now it’s *your* chance to ‘be in the know’

(There’s a theme appearing here).

Speak Up Sydney has launched as an initiative to bridge the gap between the community and the great local businesses that Sydney has to offer.

And what better way to launch an initiative than to hand out bucket loads of cash and prizes?! We wouldn’t mind some of that ourselves!

You could look at Speak Up Sydney as a game of swapsie. You share your experience on a business and at the same time uncover a new hidden gem from someone else, whilst at the same time you too learn new things, new places and we hope, become much more connected with your local community and what it has to offer.

Speak Up Sydney is a long term initiative and we hope to see some positive results generate from it over time, both with the work we do online and offline with the community and businesses and of course with our sponsors.

Some fantastic people have jumped on board to show their support for Speak Up Sydney all in an effort to join us in helping you become more connected to your community. This is all about re-discovering where you live and your future in this city.

Whilst all reviewing takes place over on the business review site provided by those lovely people at RAYV (thanks guys!) make sure you check back here regularly as we update the blog with progress on the initiative, maybe a few review writing hints & tips and of course to find out all the info there is to know on the Speak Up Sydney awards party. We’re looking forward to that one!

So, without further a do, it’s your voice and your city so Speak Up Sydney.