>We can now see the addition of United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand. But, which one is still missing? The last time, they told us that a 3 months preparation wasn't enough to allow Quebec residents to participate. It's gonna be interesting to hear the reason this year.

Language is the problem. The case studies are submitted in English. This puts residents of non English speaking countries at a disadvantage. Yes, I know they probably speak English anyway. Yes, I know they can find someone to write the case studies for them. Yes, I know all the arguments why this is silly. But, nonetheless, when Microsoft runs a contest, our legal department has to approve it.

We considered not making this a contest and making it just an international call for case studies. Then I called several of last years finalists and winners and they strongly felt that if there were no winners they probably wouldn't have entered last year. So we had a choice: an open non-contest that would not attract the same quality of entrants, or a contest that is only open to English speaking countries. We chose the latter. We also chose to encourage everyone to send in their case studies. We can't give out prizes to everyone, but we can certainly publicize all of the case studies.

Robert Green
Visual FoxPro Product Manager
Microsoft