The nominations are in, and the contenders have been picked. Now it is your turn to decide who is St. Louis’ Sexiest Cybergeek! Starting now, and going through midnight on January 13th we will be tabulating votes to figure out who among this hot nerd herd really stands bits and bytes above the rest. Last year, when the contest ran on ToastedRav.com, Brad Hogenmiller and Kelly Stevens were crowned the sexiest in the metro-area. This year they will be giving up their virtual crowns here on Girls Guide to one of these lovely contestants:

The Chicas

Jenn Whitter – Jenn is 29 years old and has been a paralegal at Armstrong Teasdale for almost ten years. In 2009 she began doing special event and bridal makeup when she started Looks by JLW. She graduated from McKendree College in Lebanon, IL with a Bachelor’s degree in Social Science. Jenn has been writing her blog, Living Life, just over two years now where she posts about anything and everything under the sun, including the struggles of going through a divorce and training for her first marathon with the Gateway Chapter of Team in Traning. You can find Jenn on Twitter where she chats as @jenn_if_er as well as on LinkedIn.

Kathleen Manning – Kathleen Manning is 24 years old and is the Social Media Specialist at Monsanto Company. She is the editor of the Monsanto blog Beyond the Rows, the voice behind the corporate Twitter account, @MonsantoCo, and counsels Monsanto employees in social media related matters. Kathleen graduated from the University of Missouri-St. Louis with a Bachelor’s degree in Communication. In her free time she loves to cheer on the St. Louis Cardinals, play her Wii, bake cupcakes, and spend time with her best friends and family. Kathleen can be found on Twitter as @redbirdsbroad and is a member of the professional networking site LinkedIn.

Melissa Howland – Hi, my name is Melissa and I am a huge nerd! I am a 28 year old movie critic/blogger/tweeter/facebook-er (my BA in Art Therapy is hard at work on fun nonsense) who can’t stay off of her computer long enough to get a tan. I enjoy avid movie watching, Count Chocula cereal, Ghost Hunters, any sort of art project, reading, my fur children (dogs), snow cones, shenanigans with my equally dorky friends, Harry Potter, and currently the New Super Mario Bros. on Wii. I think I really am addicted to my computer. We have a love/hate relationship, especially around bed time when it keeps tempting me with crazy videos to watch and farms to tend to. I honestly check every account that I have several times a day because I am thoroughly convinced that people care and listen to what I have to say! Ok, I think I touched base on quite a bit, but feel free to tweet/email/comment to ask me about sock monkeys, or what mouthwash I find the most refreshing. Oh, and I collect yard gnomes, I think that is important to include. It started as a joke making fun of all of the people who are obsessed with them, but the joke turned back on me. I think they are hilarious!

The Dudes

Jim Barnthouse – Only a year into moving from Chicago to St Louis, Jim Barnthouse has very quickly become a fixture in the local cybergeek community with his popular St Louis-centric blog, ArchObserver. Further establishing his geeky cred, Jim works as the Director of Social Media and Digital Strategy at the digital marketing agency, Habanero, where he can often be found giving high fives and complaining that there is no “dislike” button on Facebook. As a subscriber to both Runner’s World and Wired magazines, Jim Barnthouse is taking his commitment to sexy geekdom very seriously. He’s currently preparing to run a Marathon while updating his Twitter feed, which is, as he admits, a bit of a lofty goal. “The iPhone touchscreen is almost impossible to use with sweaty fingers. Yes, my fingers sweat… Although I like to think maybe it’s my iPhone that’s actually sweating. It makes me feel less self conscious, plus, I get to pretend my iPhone is working really hard.” If you’ve ever met Jim in person you can probably concur that an iPhone in his hands is indeed likely working at capacity. You can find Jim regularly tweeting as @JimBarnthouse and on Facebook.

Josh Kocurek - Josh Kocurek is a thinker, a communicator, a 100% “digital dude.” His passion for tech and social media comes in handy at his job with Millennium Hotels & Resorts as Web & Communications Engineer. A proclaimed lover of Indie Rock and Electronica music, Josh is at home with his earbuds in and his iPhone cranked to 11. When not killing time on Twitter or Facebook, Josh spends his free time playing video games, honing his tennis skills, singing karaoke, or conceiving his next blog post. He has a weakness for sushi and exotic teas. You can check out Josh’s personal website at JoshKocurek.com, and, like a true cybergeek, he regularly visits his favorite websites - Digg and Mashable.

Dave Mills – Dave is a Systems Administrator for a St. Louis based ISP supporting large scale environment architectures in the realm of web based applications and web sites. There is no discrepancy however in that Dave’s first love is being a single father to his 2 beautiful daughters. Being a “geek” comes after being a father…no contest. Self proclaimed Apple FanBoy, Dave enjoys working with Macs and anything with an Apple logo. Dave is also an advocate for Social Media and has made many lifelong friends in St. Louis through sites like Twitter and organizations like STLSMC. In his former life, he was a motorcycle mechanic who worked in a shop by day, and on the racetrack by night and weekends. While Dave has been blogging for years on his personal family site, he has, in the last year, focused more on bingbonghotdog.com as a whimsical journal of his life and antics.

Thad Vaughn – I’m an infrastructure geek. All problems can be solved with technology. I specialize in virtualization and storage technology. I also consider myself to be a bit of Windows 7 evangelist. I like to geek out on Star Wars, Star Trek, Eureka, Farscape, and Firefly. If not for my kids I would spend all of my free time on Gears of War and other Xbox based shooters. No WOW for me. For now I am limited to Wii, DS, and Team Fortress 2. You can find Thad on Twitter where he chats as @thdvghn.

*Of Note* Sadly, we learned yesterday of the passing of one of last year’s nominees, Brad Graham. Aside from being a sexy cybergeek, Brad was a vibrant voice in the St. Louis community and he will be truly missed. You can read more about Brad here.

And now for the voting, you have one week to get your vote in to determine who will be crowned this year’s winners for St. Louis’ Sexiest Cybergeek…