>>>Dude - there is always a reason for these things ..
>>>so far ? you haven't touched on it .
>>>mondo regards [Bill]
>>
>>You did read the promo material on the site, didn't you? It seems pretty clear what they're trying to accomplish. It looks very narcissistic to me.
>>
>>BTW satire doesn't have to touch on anything it doesn't want to.
>
>Al -
>while I can appreciate your satire - and your POV on the competition -
>I don't share it .
>
>I think competitions like this are mondo cool things on many fronts:
>
>1. It makes a huge/intense team building event for the developer teams. Beats the heck outta white water rafting [imo].
>2. It's yet another form of marketing for each team/firm.
>3. Narsicisstic [sp] ? Really ? OF COURSE IT IS - But in the same breath - don't you think your toolset and your approach to solving problems via software development is the best ? If you don't, then maybe you should. If you DO - then you should be comfortable with your team at the competition.
>4. Hey - they get out of the office for at least one day - perhaps even three days.
>
>On the other hand - perhaps one should not really celebrate the concept of GeekDom with a Programming Competition complete with prizes and notoriety.
>There's a reason Arnold J. Rimmer has the 'Bronze Swimming Certificate', right ? [which is another treatise in itself, and I won't jump into that here in this thread - perhaps at a bar with you at the other side of the table]
>
>After another breath - any public competition, even in another country, has got to be a positive experience, given the sluggish growth rate of IT in this hemisphere.
>
>The sample problem deals with telecom billing. It'll be interesting to see what the real problem is.
>
>What would you do, how would you feel, if a similar competition was offered for Professional Developers at any one of the VFP conferences this year ?
>Would you participate ?
>
>But ? If I stomped on you in any way - I do apologize profusely - bow in the dust kinda thing, and offer up 2 cases or one pony keg of your favorite libation, up to 20% ABV. But I DO celebrate GeekDom, given ANY opportunity.
>
>gufen xBase [Bill]

Sure, there can be some potentially positive aspects to these things. Team building, probably. Marketing, yes - if it's done right, but I don't think that's the case here at all. Narcissistic - I was referring to how Alberta is using only Alberta teams to reinforce its "World's Top Intelligent Community" award.

I suppose my biggest beef is that the promoters claim they will present a challenge that matches reality as closely as possible. I'd argue that the short time frame just encourages people to cut corners. There aren't a lot of real-world challenges with such a short time frame where getting "something that mostly works, right now" is actually important. I've had to clean up after enough charlatans (to call a spade a spade) who bang up a mockup for a client, soak them for a large retainer and then fail to deliver, to have little respect for that approach. You and I both know, the devil is in the details.

Would I participate in such a competition? Only if the task was truly time critical. Maybe something like a system to help monitor and respond to an emergency, like a disease outbreak, forest fire, etc. Heaven knows, here in BC we've had enough of those lately - SARS, forest fires, avian flu, spruce budworm ...

It's unlikely I'd cough up a grand as an entry fee unless I got much better marketing bang than this group is offering. The IT business is full of people who are happy to offer "marketing", or to act as middlemen while providing little or no value. This competition looks like a prime example.

And not to worry - absolutely no offense taken!