Re: [ANNOUNCE] The First N900 Coding Competition! 21st May-21st June. Open to all!
 

I see, so no real requirement there... Any concrete ideas how the voting will be done?

Re: [ANNOUNCE] The First N900 Coding Competition! 21st May-21st June. Open to all!
 

by a poll here in this forum.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] The First N900 Coding Competition! 21st May-21st June. Open to all!
 

This competition is a very nice idea, and I'd like to see it organized in the best possible way, if it will be a great success we may repeat it, may be 3/4 times per year.

I guess it has two objectives:
* new apps
* new developers

I'd like to not trascurate the second point.

Actually there is *already* a developer community that in the spare time works for their projects. They have for sure some WIP projects and more possibility to win respect of a new developer coding a new application in less than one month.

These may not motivate new developers to participate and the competition will only "accelerate/sponsor" existing developer community (gaining only the first objective: more apps).

It may be nice to look for a solution that may handle well both points.
E.g. for each category write the already mentioned wish new app list, and have two subcategory, the first totally open to every project/app/idea (where "old" developers may fit their wip projects), and the second that will take only projects from the wish list and have so two winner per category.

Another point should be to have Nokia more involved while repeating the competition regularly. What's about an n900 for every category winner? and in the future, the first meego device and so on?

But to achieve that we have to propose things that meet Nokia plans.

I'm *quite sure* that putting the world Qt somewhere will help a lot (best qt application? for category?, a qt apps wish list?), but we have to take live other toolkits too and not hurt "old" developers.

Just brainstorming, what do you suggest?

Re: [ANNOUNCE] The First N900 Coding Competition! 21st May-21st June. Open to all!
 

^^^ Nicola, you mentioned a wish list yesterday and I asked, as it was your idea, if you would go ahead and make one. Have you created a wish list thread then? :) Give me the link and i'll link it in to the first post.

The competition is open to everyone, the idea is to get more development happening from everyone. There is a bit of a sub-competition open for beginners only (you might have noticed in the thread I was enquiring about purchasing 3 lazor cut stands as part of my bounty to be given as prizes only for beginners). Ive asked entrants to mark their submission with "beginner" if they'd like to be considered. If others would like to offer donations/prizes for beginners I dont see why we couldnt accommodate that.

Voting will be subjective, people will put their own value on what's entered. You mentioned projects may be WIP for some time which is great. On the other hand, other people will equally likely to vote for something fresh and new. Just because someone has more experience doesnt mean they have the ideas that capture voters imagination. Plus it's good practise, and newbies will find help and encouragement Im sure.

I'd suggest we definitely dont make it a Qt only competition. More Nokia involvement would be great, and maybe if this one is a success they will get more involved in arranging regular competitions. So help us to achieve that :)

Out of interest, are you planning on entering an application, and what development framework were you thinking of?

Edit: Thanks to EarthRise for spotting the broken link in the first post! Fixed.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] The First N900 Coding Competition! 21st May-21st June. Open to all!
 

I did not forgot the wish list, and planned to put it on the wiki page (qgil suggested to use the wiki), just need a bit of free time :)

About the newbie developers your pov is ok, but still think that in future we have to differentiate new entries (ala gsoc) and the old ones in a different manner, as now we need more apps and more developers :)

About me, I personally need a "normal" (not a desktop widget) sound recorder application, that show a srolling graph of the input level plus basic editing capabilities to cut uninteresting parts, plus autostart/stop based on treeshold levels.

Do not know if free time will permit me to code it or to offer some euros :)

I have another couple of blocker to decide, I'd like to use Qt, so the 1.2 release will help a lot, but the release date is yet unknown, and have to learn qt-mobility to see if I may use it's audio capabilities instead of using alsa-lib directly (my preferred way actually, as I'd like to implement an aggressive ring buffer in a different thread to avoid alsa underrun when the device is under heavy load).

Picking another task from the wish list may be feasable too :)

Niko

Re: [ANNOUNCE] The First N900 Coding Competition! 21st May-21st June. Open to all!
 

@kojacker - Your signature needs a date change.

Re: [ANNOUNCE] The First N900 Coding Competition! 21st May-21st June. Open to all!
 

I agree with nicola.mfb on the 2 objectives. The idea with the beginners is a good one, though a bit hard to define who is a beginner and who isn't.

I would probably consider myself as a beginner. I'm a professional developer, but I've never made an app for a mobile device, nor one in QT/GTK. I made a port of a game for N900 (see my signature), I don't think that makes me too experienced though.

Some guidelines for that should be set I think. The lasercut stand is cool, I really like it, but I wouldn't like to rob it off anyone thats more noob than me :D

About the rewards for apps from the wishlist, I don't see how it helps with those 2 objectives. The wishlist can give developers ideas, if they don't have their own, and also an app high on the list will probably have high chances of winning if it is good. Although it would give devs motivation to make an app they don't need themselves... But still, I don't think its good to shatter the prices too much.

EDIT:
Oh, for the wishlist, it really needs to have some voting system and should be ordered by popularity. Hard to do with just a wiki? Maybe a thread and update the wiki manually? Thats a tedious job though. The brainstorming system seems similar to what we need here, but this would be abusing it quite a bit...

Re: [ANNOUNCE] The First N900 Coding Competition! 21st May-21st June. Open to all!
 

Yep, more apps and more developers was the reason the competition was started in the first place :)

Personally I would consider you slightly closer to intermediate experience than outright beginner. Certainly you have a lot more experience than me :) But it's subjective ofcourse, it is hard to define but some folks will have very limited programming knowledge and making their first program. At the moment there aren't too many beginners coming forward, and it's hard to judge their needs if they aren't making them clear. I did offer to try and get a series of small coding tutorials done, like simple PyQT forms and dialogs, simple read from and write to a database, accelerometer control but i didnt get any response to that. There are already excellent tutorials, it may be that it isnt needed. This competition in part followed from this quietness from potential new developers and to have something that newbs can work towards joining in with.

Hmm prices?

To be honest, the whole wishlist thing is a great idea but if a simple thread isnt good enough then it needs someone to come forward and devote some time into it. Volunteers are always welcome and much sought!

Edit:
Niko, Im not sure if I read you correctly but please put a link to your wishlist once it's done onto the wiki but not the actual wishlist itself! That could turn the wiki page into a right lengthy mess! I also feel it's good to physical separate them, the wishlist is there to spark ideas and give an indication of what the community would like, but should not seen as an integral part of the competition. Developers should feel free to design and enjoy working on projects they really want to!

Also Niko, it sounds like you have some passion for getting new developers involved in this competition. If you're not working on a project because of 1.2, though that shouldnt stop you, are you able and willing to devote some time and drive that ideal forwards?

Re: [ANNOUNCE] The First N900 Coding Competition! 21st May-21st June. Open to all!
 

Right :) count me out of the beginners group then.

Hard to tell.. I think I'm gonna check out at least some of those tutorials in the coming days, so I might give you some feedback then.

Sorry, I mean "rewards", not "prices". Its the same word in my language (reading it after me doesn't make sense to me anymore :) I'll edit it)

I'm sorry to inform you that I'm absolutely not suitable for anything like this, because I'm lazy, unreliable and have very little time to spare... But I really appreciate what you guys are doing :) I'll rather do the coding. I was about to start the filemanager project for quite some time now. This just gave me a little push :)

Re: [ANNOUNCE] The First N900 Coding Competition! 21st May-21st June. Open to all!
 

Is this competition being publicized outside of this forum?
Also, even if you live in Australia, does Nokia pay for the trip?

It would be great if more and more people on the net actually get to see that this competition is going on
Maybe we'll get many newcomers onboard due to the prizes being so good. More entrants the better! =)