A mini-blog—several of you participated in polls for my (Nancy’s) search for a design for the smokestack on the Gyrfalcon.  It was my first foray into crowdsourcing.  I used a company called 99 Designs.  Basically, you have an idea for a logo, website, etc, and 99 Designs runs a contest asking for submissions.  Graphic artists upload entries, and you rate the entries and give feedback.  Many of the artists refine their submissions based on the feedback.  After the contest is over, you pick a winner, and still have the opportunity to finetune the image, working with the winning artist.  In my contest, I had over 100 submissions from several artists from all over the world.  In the end, we went with a very natural looking bird from a Serbian designer, although many of the more graphic birds were quite beautiful.  Here is the winning image: