Look what Dani sent me...

[John A]

As many of you are already aware of, I was the winner of DaniWeb's end-of-the-year blogging competition. So, Dani offered me the choice of both a Sony Cybershot digital camera and an Xbox 360, or I could trade those in and get a Dell 24" flatpanel display. So... I originally planned to chose the former, but then changed my mind because I realized I'd have to get rid of the Xbox 360 console. :rolleyes: So I ended up getting the monitor.

Now you have no idea how much Dani went through to get this prize sent to me. I'll admit it -- being an American must have its advantages :mrgreen:. So I'm glad me and Dani got this whole shipping/importing thing worked out.

As a special bonus for continuing to blog, Dani even sent me the Cybershot camera. Now that's what I call generous!

So... I've taken a few photos of my monitor using the camera, so as you can see, both work very well. Now all I have to do is go out and buy a DVI->Mini DVI adapter so I can actually hook this thing up to my MacBook! (Pictures attached are from my 10 year-old Toshiba Satellite laptop...)

Thank-you Dani very, very much!

[Dani]

I'm glad you're happy with your prize. But c'mon ... you're not showing off the fact that it's a 12 megapixel Sony digital camera. That's like double the megapixels of MY brand new camera for heaven's sake!

[John A]

I'm glad you're happy with your prize. But c'mon ... you're not showing off the fact that it's a 12 megapixel Sony digital camera. That's like double the megapixels of MY brand new camera for heaven's sake!

Yeah, it was a pain to resize those photos so that they would fit in the image-size attachment restrictions... I had to fire up Gimp just so I could attach a couple of photos! And yes, it's a bit of an upgrade from my 1 megapixel camera I used previously. ;)

BTW that LCD screen is massive on the back of the camera! 3 whole inches! There's hardly room for any buttons, which is great since it's a touchscreen...

[Sulley's Boo]

Congraaaaaaaats Joe =D nice stuff! ..
so sweet of Daniiiii

[~s.o.s~]

Hey there Joey, congratulations on your achievement and the prizes. :D

I now believe that the prize thing was for real and not a hoax... ;)

[The Dude]

Ah so sweet :)

['Stein]

Very nice Joe. :)

[jbarry315]

Congratulations, Joe P... It was gracious of you to show your new toys... They really are neat! And, they just go to show you--- Dani's no slouch...

[louiselastic]

Congrats to u :) I m wondering when I can win such prize from deniweb!

[happygeek]

More competitions will be announced in due course. Just keep contributing and watching this space...

[John A]

Now all I have to do is go out and buy a DVI->Mini DVI adapter so I can actually hook this thing up to my MacBook! (Pictures attached are from my 10 year-old Toshiba Satellite laptop...)

Update: I just bought the adapter today from my local MacStop (~20 USD), and now I've got dual screens! I just watched Ice Age: The Meltdown on it, and true, not the best movie to test out a widescreen monitor, but yeah it worked nice. Call me geeky if you want, but I think it's the best thing ever to be able to MSN while a movie is playing!

I've attached a new photo, though it's not that much different from the original pictures.

[~s.o.s~]

Oh how I envy you... :D

[iamthwee]

woah kewl!

[Dani]

*hint* Maybe this thread can serve as some inspiration to some of you guys to participate in future DaniWeb competitions.

[jbennet]

wow, i want one too!

[~s.o.s~]

*hint* Maybe this thread can serve as some inspiration to some of you guys to participate in future DaniWeb competitions.

*Wish* we had time for that... ;)

[happygeek]

I can loan you my 'make time stand still' machine if you like, it does require you not to sleep very much and drink large quantities of Red Bull and Jolt Cola though :)

[happygeek]

On a serious note though, if you guys tell us what kind of competitions would make you find the time and what kind of prizes would aid the process, then that is all useful info which just might find its way into a future compo.

[jbennet]

how about programming challenges?

whoever makes the program (could be a website too i suppose) that fits the sepcification best gets say, some webspace or some coding tools or a book

[peter_budo]

how about programming challenges?

whoever makes the program (could be a website too i suppose) that fits the sepcification best gets say, some webspace or some coding tools or a book

Good idea, but I can spot there some possible problems...
Will moderators and admins be allow to enter? If so, less chances for less skilled people to get their chance. If no, why should they be striped of chance to win something?
For price, it doesn't have to material thing(not always, sometimes you have give prices like that). As for me I would be happy with honorary membership for a few months, like on these members which made donation. That may inspire people... ;)

[John A]

how about programming challenges?

whoever makes the program (could be a website too i suppose) that fits the sepcification best gets say, some webspace or some coding tools or a book

How would that benefit DaniWeb though? The goal of a contest is usually to do something useful. For example, DaniWeb's blogging area isn't exactly the most popular place for DaniWeb users to hang out, so the goal of the contest was to get lots of people blogging (which unfortunately didn't happen).

[jbennet]

if we got lots of people coding for prizes then it would attract lots of knowlegable people to the forums and be good

i like the idea of being a special member (maybe a custom title with coder of the month badge?)

e.g you could say:

task this month:

design an adressbook using a data driven web technology

and all the contestants would be asked to submit thier code (for the benefit of everyone else) and whoever was voted (by poll) as best would recieve the special month membership/ prize

(they do precisely this thing on planetsource code btw so i know people would actually do it)

[John A]

if we got lots of people coding for prizes then it would attract lots of knowlegable people to the forums and be good

I guess I see your point...

['Stein]

That sounds like a great idea (even though I'm not a programmer). Drawing visitors to the site, regardless to a specific part, will be better off for the site.

Godspeed on this idea. :)

[~s.o.s~]

Think of it this way. A programming contest is announced. Big money is at stake.

Probably 1000's of people register and send in their codes. Who do you think would have the time to evaluate their correctness, not to mention there are probably infinte ways of solving the same thing. What would be the selection criteria ? More importantly who would evaluate all the enteries ?

Look before you leap.

[Dani]

I think it's incredibly optimistic that, even offering a very substantial prize, to expect more than a few entries in a programming competition. Just look at the blog competition - there was only one blogger and he was an existing member. In general, competitions are a great tool to use to motivate existing members, and can even lure the occasional lurker, but they certainly don't have the potential to draw in any brand new people. That's just the nature of forum competitions.

That aside, however, assuming the overly-optimistic value of 5 or 10 contributions to a coding competition, the same problem would exist in the judging.

Even that aside, you have to appreciate the business aspects related to the competition. The purpose of a competition would be to better DaniWeb in some way - this means that the value received would need to at least break even with the amount spend on the prize in addition to the amount of time spent running the contest.

At this point, DaniWeb receives 100,000 visitors daily, give or take 20,000 depending upon what day of the week it is. A few thousand extra visitors (even if they all became regular members) aren't capable of generating more than ten bucks and certainly wouldn't be reason to hand out a prize worth thousands.

The blogging competition worked because it had nothing to do with the actual members who participated but instead was focused around getting our content syndicated. The advantages to DaniWeb were that it gave us unique content, it syndicated this unique content of ours across the web, it got us listed on a number of largescale news sites which lead to viral marketing, and it generated links to DaniWeb which helps our search engine optimization efforts, therefore increasing our search engine rankings. On top of all that, it shifted DaniWeb away from being entirely community-based and more towards an online news publication, which brought the attention of large advertising agencies willing to spend big bucks on an audience of IT professionals in management positions. The number of bloggers who participated was irrelevant - the number of blog entries and the number of trackbacks was what made it worthwhile.

A code snippet competition, on the other hand, it would seem to me, would be about users spending time writing code offline and then privately submitting contest entries - none of which generates any extra traffic for us or advertising views which generates our revenue. No new content would be generated. There would be no longterm effects as a result of running the competition. And the visitors generated would be hardcore developers - not the people that the advertisers with big budgets are directly after, so it wouldn't have the potential of helping to land any large ad campaigns.

So now you see ... some inside information as to the decision process that goes into coming up with a competition and being able to afford such generous prizes.

This doesn't go to say that a code competition is definitely not in our future. It just means that, for now, at least, if one were to run (provided a way to evaluate it would be feasible), it would be hard to validate an expensive prize.

[jbennet]

i see your point

[~s.o.s~]

So I guess you need to focus more on drawing bloggers...since as I see, blogging is the only activity which as you say generates increased search engine rankings.

[Dani]

So I guess you need to focus more on drawing bloggers...since as I see, blogging is the only activity which as you say generates increased search engine rankings.

That's not true. Forum posts work. Tutorials do so, too. It's not just increased search engine rankings we're after but it's something much more viral than that. The goal is to create unique content en masse that has a large audience and targets people who hold some type of purchasing power at their companies. (Enough to make it worth the while of large tech companies to want to target them, hence where the money spent on prizes is made back.)

[happygeek]

As Dani says, it is all about creating the right volume of the right quality content to get DaniWeb noticed by professionals and advertising agencies alike.