[awards-program] Contest Organization Proposal: CG Based

[Ben Rockwood]

I believe that the community is best served by integrating the contest 
as seamlessly as possible into the existing structure.  The goal is to 
encourage growth and force contestants to work within the system, rather 
than around it.  Ultimately, I want people to be involved with the 
community and work with it, not just submit contributions ad hoc.

I would suggest that of the current CG's, the following constitute the 
"core" groups:

Academic
Advocacy
Appliances
Desktop
Drivers
Docs
Games
HPC
Installation and Packaging
i18n
Networking
ON
Performance
Security
Storage

All of these groups a sufficiently broad as to incorporate a range of 
potential projects without being overly specific, as opposed to CG's 
that should be projects, such as Xen, SMF, Zones, etc.

Each core CG would represent a category.  The Core Contributers would 
manage and judge the submissions within their CG.  This encourages 
contestants to actually find the appropriate CG, begin a dialog, become 
a contributer, and go through the applicable processes for 
contribution.  In this way, you don't "submit" to the contest, per se, 
but rather you contribute and are rewarded.

In this model, prizes would be broken down by CG, $100 for 15 groups 
means that prizes are smaller.  The model might be:

CG First Prize: $3,500
CG Runner Up: $1,500

This would leave $25,000 potentially (assuming there is $100,000 
overall) for a grand-prize, or maybe a smaller $15,000 grand prize 
(added to your CG winnings) and $10,000 second.


So pro's and con's...

Pro's:
 * This model encourage activity within our structure which will 
hopefully have long lasting effects beyond the contest.
 * This model infuses interest in CG's that are inactive now.
 * This model is fairly straight forward, leveraging the current leadership

Con's:
 * More people involved, meaning more coordination and potential confusion.
 * Smaller prizes
 * Because the OGB has not yet re-structured the CG's, deciding which 
CG's are "core" and which are not could cause tension.


benr.