I pinged the following individuals who participated in last year's
coding contest to see if they might chime in on what was good and what
was suboptimal about last year's event:

Aron Atkins (last year's winner)
Benjamin Fisher, Olin College, presenter for last year's Team Olin
Ben Hayden, Olin College, participant
Rebecca Scholl, Olin College, participant

- Mike Walsh



--- In barcampboston@yahoogroups.com, J Potter <jpotter-barcamp@...>
wrote:
>
>
> > It sounds like competition is not purely about computer programming.
> > Is that right?
> >
> Depends upon what one means -- the teams had to create an entry
> (presumably software, but I suppose hardware would have been accepted)
> and present it. It wasn't structured like, say, the ACM contests.
> Perhaps the format we used could have been described as the un-contest
> for the un-conference -- i.e., instead of a rigid format and
> structure, an ad-hoc one.
>
> > Please clarify how keywords fit in with software code.
> >
>
> We required teams to "use" 5 of the 20 terms. For example, some of the
> terms were "linked list", "calculator", "BBQ" -- seemingly impossible
> -- but one team, from these (plus 2 others I forget at the moment)
> created a "Boston Bar Queue (BBQ) calculator" website that showed real-
> time stats for how long the wait was for various venues, and included
> calculations for travel time from your current point to the various
> listed venues, such that you knew the "best" bar to head to at any
> given moment. (If I were a VC, I think I would've invested on the
> spot. ;-)
>
> The background thinking on the 5 of 20 terms: it essentially prevents
> people from creating an entry (or recycling something) from before the
> contest starts, but still leaves the scope wide open to whatever
> interests people. Since BarCamp attracts a lot of different types of
> people with varying amounts of skill, I spent some time thinking about
> a contest format that would be suitable for all. While we could have
> gone the much-more traditional route, I felt that it would have
> instantly precluded a vast majority of "newbies".
>
> What we did last year by no means has to be done this year -- feel
> free to adopt what you like, and discard what you like.
>
>
> best,
> Jeff
>