[updated 23/09/11] New XCore competition - have your say!

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phalt
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Post by phalt »

Bianco wrote:
phalt wrote:The XMOS web team have noticed a decline in Pass the Parcel activity over the past few months, so much so on some days only 1 or 2 passes are made!

For example: the Monday Madness parcel is 17 passes away from being won and has only climbed 4 passes in the past month.

Considering over 512 passes are now needed for some parcels to be won, we have decided that something has to be done to save it from becoming a stale, useless prize as the number of passes will only ever get bigger and bigger.

Therefore we'd like to hear your ideas about new competitions you'd like to see on XCore and also what prizes you'd like to win!

We're opening the board to any suggestion you have as you'll be the one with a chance of winning stuff!

Do you want to keep the Pass the Parcel, reset the count, or have you got a better idea?
From my understanding each time someone wins, the number of passes for the next winner is increased (doubled or ^2 or so). This of course can't hold. What if we stop with increasing the number of passes and put it to a number where on average there will be a winner in 2-4 weeks.
Yeah so currently the standard parcel requires 1024 more passes, which is ridiculous because at it's current rate it'll take over a year for it to be won again!
I think the main problem with the pass the parcel is it's lost it's appeal: even if we did set it to say, every 20 passes, people would get bored of it quickly or a few people would keep winning and make it unfair on the others.


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Folknology
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Post by Folknology »

Well to be honest i think that the price ($1000) that microchip gives for a fully ported, tested and semi-documented TCP/IP stack is a totally joke!
They are just looking for cheap labour and a PR stunt. They have a lot to gain with it and yet they don't put a few employees on it.
I wasn't suggesting that Microchip have the right balance or even approach for that matter, merely that different incentives are required for different goals and as such everything needs exploring ;-)

regards
Al
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phalt
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Post by phalt »

Folknology wrote:
Well to be honest i think that the price ($1000) that microchip gives for a fully ported, tested and semi-documented TCP/IP stack is a totally joke!
They are just looking for cheap labour and a PR stunt. They have a lot to gain with it and yet they don't put a few employees on it.
I wasn't suggesting that Microchip have the right balance or even approach for that matter, merely that different incentives are required for different goals and as such everything needs exploring ;-)

regards
Al
Yep you're right - we need a different incentive for the people who have a higher level of experience instead of just a generalised competition for everyone which doesn't really accommodate anyone.
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Bianco
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Post by Bianco »

To elaborate my opinion in a different direction i think that competitions only work for smaller projects that can be done in a reasonable amount of time. It does not have to be extremely useful like the TCP/IP example from microchip. Usefulness might be even inverse proportional to fun :p

I have participated in a few electronics contests on a Dutch forum where the only thing you can win is honour :). The winner gets to decide what the next assignment for the contest will be. A few examples were:
  • Find an origal way to blink a LED
  • Do something cool with a HD44780
  • Make a PC add-on
With the current activity (or lack thereof) in the projects/github i believe that the contest assignments should be rather small otherwise it will just fail.
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phalt
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Post by phalt »

Bianco wrote:To elaborate my opinion in a different direction i think that competitions only work for smaller projects that can be done in a reasonable amount of time. It does not have to be extremely useful like the TCP/IP example from microchip. Usefulness might be even inverse proportional to fun :p

I have participated in a few electronics contests on a Dutch forum where the only thing you can win is honour :). The winner gets to decide what the next assignment for the contest will be. A few examples were:
  • Find an origal way to blink a LED
  • Do something cool with a HD44780
  • Make a PC add-on
With the current activity (or lack thereof) in the projects/github i believe that the contest assignments should be rather small otherwise it will just fail.
That has been a noticeable drop in project activity this summer and I brought up the idea of "challenges" that would have different levels of expertise like you suggested.
I do like the idea of getting the winner to pick the next challenge; it would add a good twist to them and keep them exciting.

They should certainly be small and achievable in a short amount of time (monthly or possibly bi-weekly?)
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phalt
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Post by phalt »

Further to this: the Project of the Month hasn't been awarded for the past few months because of the lack of projects being submitted.

I'd like to keep this running as an overall competition whilst others go on, does everyone still want to see the Project of the Month kept? Maybe change the prize?
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Bianco
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Post by Bianco »

I believe one should also take a look at previous attempts by XMOS to organise such contests and why it did or did not work out. More notably FoosTech and The XMOS Challenge
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Post by Interactive_Matter »

phalt wrote: That has been a noticeable drop in project activity this summer and I brought up the idea of "challenges" that would have different levels of expertise like you suggested.
It would also be of great interest why there is a big drop in projects. Summer is always a bad time for projects, but what keeps users from developing xmos projects (my reason: time, will be fixed)
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phalt
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Post by phalt »

It would also be of great interest why there is a big drop in projects. Summer is always a bad time for projects, but what keeps users from developing xmos projects (my reason: time, will be fixed)
I believe the time of year was a big contributing factor to the drop and I've spent a long time looking at why it occurred. It could be that new users do not feel their projects are worthy of uploading because they are too basic or simple compared to some of the previous Project of the Month winners.

It's good to see my hope for competitions to entice new users was brought up by some of you because that's exactly what I'd like to incorporate!
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Interactive_Matter
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Post by Interactive_Matter »

phalt wrote:
It would also be of great interest why there is a big drop in projects. Summer is always a bad time for projects, but what keeps users from developing xmos projects (my reason: time, will be fixed)
I believe the time of year was a big contributing factor to the drop and I've spent a long time looking at why it occurred. It could be that new users do not feel their projects are worthy of uploading because they are too basic or simple compared to some of the previous Project of the Month winners.

It's good to see my hope for competitions to entice new users was brought up by some of you because that's exactly what I'd like to incorporate!
forked the discussion to https://www.xcore.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1451
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