Hi Etienne, Some thoughts below
On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 10:27 AM, Etienne de Bruin <[email protected]>wrote: > Greetings SDRuby > > I am involved with setting up a conference next year and more > specifically, with hosting a developer competition that will run for the > duration of the 2 day conference. The conference will attract many in the > non-profit/education space. I humbly ask your time and advice on helping > me with the following questions: > > 1. In your opinion, what makes for a good format for the competition? One > project, many teams? Many projects, one team? Other variations? > As a developer who is overwhelmingly focused on one project, competitions & hackathons give me an opportunity to learn and explore new things in a tight time period without having to deal with maintenance. Often I'll have some technology or library I want to try out, or I'll go looking for a project that requires something I haven't done or worked with before. For me at least then, having multiple project possibilities, or at least a very open-ended project is very good. I liked the structure of the startup hackathon the AI center hosted a while ago... there were multiple projects, and they were posed as problems but were very open-ended on possible solutions. > > 2. How would I attract companies and organizations to send their > developers to this conference and participate in the competition? > Right now recruitment is very tough... so maybe give organizations with more than X developers involved in the process 5 minutes to pitch their company? > > 3. If you have participated or experienced this type of competition, would > you mind sharing a few thoughts with me on your observation or enjoyment? > I did a little of this above... at least for me, key is open-endedness, interesting problems, and preferably some interesting data or technology to play with that I might not otherwise get access to or discover. -Kevin > > I want to create a buzz at the conference and thought I'd start with > asking the crew that gave me a buzz :) > > -- > Etienne de Bruin > > -- > SD Ruby mailing list > [email protected] > http://groups.google.com/group/sdruby -- SD Ruby mailing list [email protected] http://groups.google.com/group/sdruby
