I appreciate what you're saying, and certainly the things you want to see funded are worthwhile. However, the goals for my programming competition are quite different, for example:
#1 – raise the public profile of Smalltalk across a broad swath of the population in Canada and other countries. Word of mouth about the competition will spread beyond Canada, esp. after the winners of the competition gain some local media coverage. #2 – generate excitement and interest in kids, esp. at the high school level. There's nothing better than a sports-like competition to achieve this. #3 – by generating interest in kids, we seed the next generation of programmers with knowledge and experience in Smalltalk. This is not unlike the way interest in Linux grew from students in colleges and universities throughout recent decades. #4 – convince educators to include Smalltalk in their curriculums. I don't know what programming languages are being taught in high schools, but I know it's not Smalltalk. I tried reaching out to local school boards, but they showed no interest. In colleges and universities, the most commonly taught languages are Python and Java. At least, that's the case in North America, I don't know about Europe. I hope to open their eyes to Smalltalk. This is a decidedly marketing-based approach, something that I don't believe any other programming language has tried. It's a worthwhile experiment, and that's why I hope Smalltalkers everywhere will stand behind it. Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas-2 wrote > H :-), > > > On 16/06/18 18:12, horrido wrote: >> FYI, I am trying to jumpstart a Smalltalk programming competition. Read >> all >> about it here. >> <https://medium.com/@richardeng/smalltalk-programming-competition-2be77cab0e75> >> >> >> My plan is to use Pharo for this competition, even if it makes companies >> like Cincom and Instantiations unhappy. >> >> Any support this competition can receive would be greatly appreciated. > > I just tweeted about it. > > I'm not into a competition spirit, so I would like to think in other > possibilities to fund Pharo, even in the main goal is not reached (USD $ > 30k). For example, I remember Mozilla thinking in Mozilla Spaces (kind > of hacker/maker spaces for Open Web learning by doing in a community > mindset). Our local hackerspaces cost something like USD $6.5K a year > and it has been a good Pharo Space for almost three years of continuous > activities and several outputs and prototypes as detailed at [1]. I'm > not telling that you should invest in us particularly, but that even > from and alternative perspective that is not related with funding > individuals but communities, the same money that allows only 3 > scholarships of individuals after competing each other, would make 4 or > 5 communities sustainable in the Global South for a year, related with > Pharo and other activities and here we have the advantage of not having > a lot of technical debt with popular languages well spread in all > population, like happens in the Global North. > > [1] > http://mutabit.com/repos.fossil/grafoscopio/doc/tip/Docs/En/success-story.md > > Maybe these ideas could help in some way when combined with yours and > allow you a model for flexible funding, like the one of Indie GoGo, so > instead of a all or nothing funding for the competence, you could have a > modular approach that allow you to fund several Pharospaces across the > world, for each USD 6.5k you get, starting with those located in the > Global South (which can be more potent, more agile and cheaper). > > Just my two pesos. > > Cheers, > > Offray -- Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html
