Crowdfunding for Smalltalk Competition Scholarships

1. First prize – $10,000
2. Second prize – $6,000
3. Third prize – 3 winners of $2,000

> a Smalltalk competition with university scholarships as prizes

$50k !!?  Thats a hell of a lot for not much detail.  

* What sort of competition? 

* How many prizes at what size?  

* What governance model?

* Which universities?

On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 11:30 AM, Richard Eng <<a href="javascript:" target="_blank" gdf-obfuscated-mailto="GLA7k9ECpT8J" rel="nofollow" onmousedown="this.href='javascript:';return true;" onclick="this.href='javascript:';return true;">horrido...@...> wrote:

<a href="http://www.gofundme.com/nb4k5c" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" onmousedown="this.href='http://www.google.com/url?q\75http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gofundme.com%2Fnb4k5c\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNEZdF3ZzjOVEdohx1XKPCbZ5Iq1wQ';return true;" onclick="this.href='http://www.google.com/url?q\75http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gofundme.com%2Fnb4k5c\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNEZdF3ZzjOVEdohx1XKPCbZ5Iq1wQ';return true;">http://www.gofundme.com/nb4k5c

Crowdfunding is also a good way to <a href="https://medium.com/@trycelery/how-brands-use-crowdfunding-for-kick-ass-marketing-48f36d5a30d0" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" onmousedown="this.href='https://www.google.com/url?q\75https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F%40trycelery%2Fhow-brands-use-crowdfunding-for-kick-ass-marketing-48f36d5a30d0\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNEL2Ecz0t1rrWwdX-Q56N7_jFhxEQ';return true;" onclick="this.href='https://www.google.com/url?q\75https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F%40trycelery%2Fhow-brands-use-crowdfunding-for-kick-ass-marketing-48f36d5a30d0\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNEL2Ecz0t1rrWwdX-Q56N7_jFhxEQ';return true;">market Smalltalk!

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• Clarity of program design (which, of course, will emphasize object-oriented decomposition)
• Number of software defects (bugs) found
• Compliance to the assignment's requirements

Excerpts from Richard Eng's message of 2015-02-28 14:20:31 +0100:
> It will be open to all secondary school students.
>    1. What Smalltalk assignment can we present to the participants, who are
>    Smalltalk newbies, that can be done within 6 hours? Please submit your
>    suggestions.

having just made the experience getting students to do smalltalk tasks at
google code-in, i feel, this is a hard question.

the students will take a few hours to even familiarize themselves with
smalltalk, so i wonder if that is even a good idea?

what about write-in assignments, done at home, to a certain deadline?
anyone who completes the assignment is then invited to the competition.

the home assignment can be simple: do a tutorial (from squeak by example or
pharo by example) and upload the resulting image.

at that point everyone is familiar with smalltalk. and the competition is more meaningful.

the google melange platform can be used to manage registrations and
submissions. (it's Free Software, so a copy can be set up somewhere, why
reinvent the wheel? focus on the actual goal.  the students won't notice that
melange is not written in smalltalk)

those who get hooked from doing the tutorial will do more, and they will in
turn do better at the competition. at code-in some students had a real drive to
do as much as they could in order to win that trip to google headquarters.

i think the goal should be to get students interested in smalltalk. if they
come to the competition without preparation, then you only have 6 hours to
impress them. if they don't win anything, will that last? if instead they they
work at home for some weeks, and they like it, they will remember that,
regardless of the outcome of the competition.

greetings, martin.

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I've never organised such a competition either - so my help is limited to feedback, and also you'll need local help and I'm in Australia.   I'd like to encourage your endeavours, so please excuse most of these thoughts off the top of my head could be discouraging.  I'm trying to be pragmatic... 

* $10,000 seems a lot for a secondary school student to win.  The sort of amount that could really undermine parental control, and could be seen as a negative.

* Perhaps splitting it into a $1000 prize per venue would be better. This is the sort of thing where where the volume of winners might be better than the size of the winning.  Less issues with co-ordinating timezones.  $1000 still seems unreasonably big for secondary school students.  

* It might even be better to bring the pilot down to school level, with prizes of $100.   I expect you would contact several local schools to discuss what similar competitions are held, and what level of prizes are common (that is, before mentioning what prizes you might offer).  

* Doing ANYTHING reasonable in a new language in 6 hours seems unrealistic.  You might need to co-ordinate with secondary schools teaching Pharo, so the competition is towards the end of the course.  Otherwise any student that happens to have used Pharo would have a culpable advantage.  

* How many kids do you estimate will actually be touched by this program?  If you get 200 kids at each of five venues, that is 1000 kids, then its effectively $50 per kid providing a benefit ONE TIME ONLY. And how many of those kids, after a 6 hours exposure are likely to be retained?  Actually I think it would be better to put $50k into developing a teaching program aligned with the school curriculum.  Prepared material is always useful to teachers - they never have enough time.    Lets say 10% of final year students do the course = 30,000 kids [1] ~ $2 per kid.  Then the next year, the same material could used again to teach another 30,000 kids ~ $1 per kid, and so on.  Seems a better use of resources.

[1] <a href="http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/131204/t131204c002-eng.htm" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" onmousedown="this.href='http://www.google.com/url?q\75http%3A%2F%2Fwww.statcan.gc.ca%2Fdaily-quotidien%2F131204%2Ft131204c002-eng.htm\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNFv_5nzo4DNaWhuyRg8a-GiKhs3lQ';return true;" onclick="this.href='http://www.google.com/url?q\75http%3A%2F%2Fwww.statcan.gc.ca%2Fdaily-quotidien%2F131204%2Ft131204c002-eng.htm\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNFv_5nzo4DNaWhuyRg8a-GiKhs3lQ';return true;">http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/131204/t131204c002-eng.htm

* Indeed, you might contact the education board to see if they would share costs dollar-for-dollar.  Or you might be able to tap into funding programs that already aim to get student working with technology.   You get to influence the programs by contributing funds to develop the programs - but you are probably competing with the likes of Microsoft here.  Anyway, once you know what they are willing to spend, you can fundraise to meet that equivalent.  

* Maybe the French speaking parts of Canada would like some programming course material in their native language.  You might sell the idea that Pharo is based in France, and would be a good source of producing such material for them. 

* You might locate other programming competitions in your area and attend as a volunteer.  Hard experience is what you'll really need to pull it off successfully.  Reporting learnings from experience such would help build trust for contributors that you can deliver a working competition.   If no-one else is doing similar programs, maybe there is good reason its not done (or equally maybe the others are wrong - you'd just need to consider it)

good luck,

cheers -ben

On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 9:20 PM, Richard Eng <<a href="javascript:" target="_blank" gdf-obfuscated-mailto="pPzYBmaOKKoJ" rel="nofollow" onmousedown="this.href='javascript:';return true;" onclick="this.href='javascript:';return true;">horrido...@...> wrote:

Okay, this is where everybody in the Smalltalk community can help me. I've never organized a competition in my life, so I'm really winging it here.

This first competition will be a pilot to try out the concept. It will be a national Canadian competition. If it works out, then we can look at expanding the competition to other countries, such as the U.S., Australia, Hong Kong, Argentina, etc.

It will be held at 6 venues for good national coverage: Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Halifax, and Winnipeg. It will be open to all secondary school students. Students must register for the competition (I'm thinking of a registration website, written in Seaside, of course!).

Completed assignments will be gathered and judged according to:

• Clarity of program design (which, of course, will emphasize object-oriented decomposition)
• Number of software defects (bugs) found
• Compliance to the assignment's requirements

My concept is to have a one-day competition. Participants will be gathered in a hall for up to 6 hours to perform the assignment. Volunteers will oversee the gathering and collect the completed assignments.

Key questions:

1. What Smalltalk assignment can we present to the participants, who are Smalltalk newbies, that can be done within 6 hours? Please submit your suggestions.
2. How many students can we allow at each venue? Obviously, renting a hall must reflect its capacity. Should we put a cap on the number of participants at each venue?
3. Do we have to provide PCs for the venues, or do we require all participants to bring their own PCs? I understand that PCs can be rented, but that puts pressure on our budget.

A panel of judges must be chosen from among you. Who will volunteer?

Volunteers will be needed to oversee the venues. Please submit your names.

The times for the competition will vary across all venues to take time zones into account. Unfortunately, one of these venues will either have to start very early or very late!

These are my thoughts so far. I may have overlooked a few things.

On Saturday, 28 February 2015 01:29:11 UTC-5, Ben Coman wrote:

That helps, but still...

> The costs haven't been researched yet

This still sounds like an "concept" rather than a "plan".  Concepts can burn money quickly and ineffectively. So is developing the plan going to part of the administration costs? Fair enough. But then how about a smaller target just for the funds to develop the plan and costs, and get some runs on the board with deliverables to build trust.

Excluding some corporate backing, $50k = 500 x $100.  So scaling 500 x $10= $5000 should be enough to deliver a detailed plan (maybe needing some extra hours on love time).  You get see if the interest is there, given that people are more likely to contribute at less risk. We get to review the plan to judge whether we believe your capable of delivering on it prior to committing greater funds. 

What would be the form and rules of the competition to select a winner?

On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 12:32 PM, Richard Eng <[hidden email]> wrote:

It's a national Smalltalk competition in Canada (for starters).

Prize money:

1. First prize – $10,000
2. Second prize – $6,000
3. Third prize – 3 winners of $2,000

Total: $22,000

The remaining $28,000 are for administering the competition, eg, renting halls at the 6 venues (Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Halifax, Winnipeg); mailing out flyers to all the secondary schools across Canada; possibly renting PCs for the event. The costs haven't been researched yet, so it's not clear whether $50k is too much or not enough.

On Friday, 27 February 2015 10:38:20 UTC-5, Ben Coman wrote:

> a Smalltalk competition with university scholarships as prizes

$50k !!?  Thats a hell of a lot for not much detail.  

* What sort of competition? 

* How many prizes at what size?  

* What governance model?

* Which universities?

On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 11:30 AM, Richard Eng <[hidden email]> wrote:

<a href="http://www.gofundme.com/nb4k5c" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" onmousedown="this.href='http://www.google.com/url?q\75http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gofundme.com%2Fnb4k5c\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNEZdF3ZzjOVEdohx1XKPCbZ5Iq1wQ';return true;" onclick="this.href='http://www.google.com/url?q\75http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gofundme.com%2Fnb4k5c\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNEZdF3ZzjOVEdohx1XKPCbZ5Iq1wQ';return true;">http://www.gofundme.com/nb4k5c

Crowdfunding is also a good way to <a href="https://medium.com/@trycelery/how-brands-use-crowdfunding-for-kick-ass-marketing-48f36d5a30d0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" onmousedown="this.href='https://www.google.com/url?q\75https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F%40trycelery%2Fhow-brands-use-crowdfunding-for-kick-ass-marketing-48f36d5a30d0\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNEL2Ecz0t1rrWwdX-Q56N7_jFhxEQ';return true;" onclick="this.href='https://www.google.com/url?q\75https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F%40trycelery%2Fhow-brands-use-crowdfunding-for-kick-ass-marketing-48f36d5a30d0\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNEL2Ecz0t1rrWwdX-Q56N7_jFhxEQ';return true;">market Smalltalk!

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I've never organised such a competition either - so my help is limited to feedback, and also you'll need local help and I'm in Australia.   I'd like to encourage your endeavours, so please excuse most of these thoughts off the top of my head could be discouraging.  I'm trying to be pragmatic... 

* $10,000 seems a lot for a secondary school student to win.  The sort of amount that could really undermine parental control, and could be seen as a negative.

* Perhaps splitting it into a $1000 prize per venue would be better. This is the sort of thing where where the volume of winners might be better than the size of the winning.  Less issues with co-ordinating timezones.  $1000 still seems unreasonably big for secondary school students.  

* It might even be better to bring the pilot down to school level, with prizes of $100.   I expect you would contact several local schools to discuss what similar competitions are held, and what level of prizes are common (that is, before mentioning what prizes you might offer).  

* Doing ANYTHING reasonable in a new language in 6 hours seems unrealistic.  You might need to co-ordinate with secondary schools teaching Pharo, so the competition is towards the end of the course.  Otherwise any student that happens to have used Pharo would have a culpable advantage.  

* How many kids do you estimate will actually be touched by this program?  If you get 200 kids at each of five venues, that is 1000 kids, then its effectively $50 per kid providing a benefit ONE TIME ONLY. And how many of those kids, after a 6 hours exposure are likely to be retained?  Actually I think it would be better to put $50k into developing a teaching program aligned with the school curriculum.  Prepared material is always useful to teachers - they never have enough time.    Lets say 10% of final year students do the course = 30,000 kids [1] ~ $2 per kid.  Then the next year, the same material could used again to teach another 30,000 kids ~ $1 per kid, and so on.  Seems a better use of resources.

[1] <a href="http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/131204/t131204c002-eng.htm" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" onmousedown="this.href='http://www.google.com/url?q\75http%3A%2F%2Fwww.statcan.gc.ca%2Fdaily-quotidien%2F131204%2Ft131204c002-eng.htm\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNFv_5nzo4DNaWhuyRg8a-GiKhs3lQ';return true;" onclick="this.href='http://www.google.com/url?q\75http%3A%2F%2Fwww.statcan.gc.ca%2Fdaily-quotidien%2F131204%2Ft131204c002-eng.htm\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNFv_5nzo4DNaWhuyRg8a-GiKhs3lQ';return true;">http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/131204/t131204c002-eng.htm

* Indeed, you might contact the education board to see if they would share costs dollar-for-dollar.  Or you might be able to tap into funding programs that already aim to get student working with technology.   You get to influence the programs by contributing funds to develop the programs - but you are probably competing with the likes of Microsoft here.  Anyway, once you know what they are willing to spend, you can fundraise to meet that equivalent.  

* Maybe the French speaking parts of Canada would like some programming course material in their native language.  You might sell the idea that Pharo is based in France, and would be a good source of producing such material for them. 

* You might locate other programming competitions in your area and attend as a volunteer.  Hard experience is what you'll really need to pull it off successfully.  Reporting learnings from experience such would help build trust for contributors that you can deliver a working competition.   If no-one else is doing similar programs, maybe there is good reason its not done (or equally maybe the others are wrong - you'd just need to consider it)

good luck,

cheers -ben

On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 9:20 PM, Richard Eng <<a href="javascript:" target="_blank" gdf-obfuscated-mailto="pPzYBmaOKKoJ" rel="nofollow" onmousedown="this.href='javascript:';return true;" onclick="this.href='javascript:';return true;">horrido...@...> wrote:

Okay, this is where everybody in the Smalltalk community can help me. I've never organized a competition in my life, so I'm really winging it here.

This first competition will be a pilot to try out the concept. It will be a national Canadian competition. If it works out, then we can look at expanding the competition to other countries, such as the U.S., Australia, Hong Kong, Argentina, etc.

It will be held at 6 venues for good national coverage: Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Halifax, and Winnipeg. It will be open to all secondary school students. Students must register for the competition (I'm thinking of a registration website, written in Seaside, of course!).

Completed assignments will be gathered and judged according to:

• Clarity of program design (which, of course, will emphasize object-oriented decomposition)
• Number of software defects (bugs) found
• Compliance to the assignment's requirements

My concept is to have a one-day competition. Participants will be gathered in a hall for up to 6 hours to perform the assignment. Volunteers will oversee the gathering and collect the completed assignments.

Key questions:

1. What Smalltalk assignment can we present to the participants, who are Smalltalk newbies, that can be done within 6 hours? Please submit your suggestions.
2. How many students can we allow at each venue? Obviously, renting a hall must reflect its capacity. Should we put a cap on the number of participants at each venue?
3. Do we have to provide PCs for the venues, or do we require all participants to bring their own PCs? I understand that PCs can be rented, but that puts pressure on our budget.

A panel of judges must be chosen from among you. Who will volunteer?

Volunteers will be needed to oversee the venues. Please submit your names.

The times for the competition will vary across all venues to take time zones into account. Unfortunately, one of these venues will either have to start very early or very late!

These are my thoughts so far. I may have overlooked a few things.

On Saturday, 28 February 2015 01:29:11 UTC-5, Ben Coman wrote:

That helps, but still...

> The costs haven't been researched yet

This still sounds like an "concept" rather than a "plan".  Concepts can burn money quickly and ineffectively. So is developing the plan going to part of the administration costs? Fair enough. But then how about a smaller target just for the funds to develop the plan and costs, and get some runs on the board with deliverables to build trust.

Excluding some corporate backing, $50k = 500 x $100.  So scaling 500 x $10= $5000 should be enough to deliver a detailed plan (maybe needing some extra hours on love time).  You get see if the interest is there, given that people are more likely to contribute at less risk. We get to review the plan to judge whether we believe your capable of delivering on it prior to committing greater funds. 

What would be the form and rules of the competition to select a winner?

On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 12:32 PM, Richard Eng <[hidden email]> wrote:

It's a national Smalltalk competition in Canada (for starters).

Prize money:

1. First prize – $10,000
2. Second prize – $6,000
3. Third prize – 3 winners of $2,000

Total: $22,000

The remaining $28,000 are for administering the competition, eg, renting halls at the 6 venues (Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Halifax, Winnipeg); mailing out flyers to all the secondary schools across Canada; possibly renting PCs for the event. The costs haven't been researched yet, so it's not clear whether $50k is too much or not enough.

On Friday, 27 February 2015 10:38:20 UTC-5, Ben Coman wrote:

> a Smalltalk competition with university scholarships as prizes

$50k !!?  Thats a hell of a lot for not much detail.  

* What sort of competition? 

* How many prizes at what size?  

* What governance model?

* Which universities?

On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 11:30 AM, Richard Eng <[hidden email]> wrote:

<a href="http://www.gofundme.com/nb4k5c" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" onmousedown="this.href='http://www.google.com/url?q\75http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gofundme.com%2Fnb4k5c\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNEZdF3ZzjOVEdohx1XKPCbZ5Iq1wQ';return true;" onclick="this.href='http://www.google.com/url?q\75http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gofundme.com%2Fnb4k5c\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNEZdF3ZzjOVEdohx1XKPCbZ5Iq1wQ';return true;">http://www.gofundme.com/nb4k5c

Crowdfunding is also a good way to <a href="https://medium.com/@trycelery/how-brands-use-crowdfunding-for-kick-ass-marketing-48f36d5a30d0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" onmousedown="this.href='https://www.google.com/url?q\75https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F%40trycelery%2Fhow-brands-use-crowdfunding-for-kick-ass-marketing-48f36d5a30d0\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNEL2Ecz0t1rrWwdX-Q56N7_jFhxEQ';return true;" onclick="this.href='https://www.google.com/url?q\75https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F%40trycelery%2Fhow-brands-use-crowdfunding-for-kick-ass-marketing-48f36d5a30d0\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNEL2Ecz0t1rrWwdX-Q56N7_jFhxEQ';return true;">market Smalltalk!

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<a href="http://www.gofundme.com/nb4k5c" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" onmousedown="this.href='http://www.google.com/url?q\75http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gofundme.com%2Fnb4k5c\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNEZdF3ZzjOVEdohx1XKPCbZ5Iq1wQ';return true;" onclick="this.href='http://www.google.com/url?q\75http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gofundme.com%2Fnb4k5c\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNEZdF3ZzjOVEdohx1XKPCbZ5Iq1wQ';return true;">http://www.gofundme.com/nb4k5c

Crowdfunding is also a good way to <a href="https://medium.com/@trycelery/how-brands-use-crowdfunding-for-kick-ass-marketing-48f36d5a30d0" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" onmousedown="this.href='https://www.google.com/url?q\75https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F%40trycelery%2Fhow-brands-use-crowdfunding-for-kick-ass-marketing-48f36d5a30d0\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNEL2Ecz0t1rrWwdX-Q56N7_jFhxEQ';return true;" onclick="this.href='https://www.google.com/url?q\75https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F%40trycelery%2Fhow-brands-use-crowdfunding-for-kick-ass-marketing-48f36d5a30d0\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNEL2Ecz0t1rrWwdX-Q56N7_jFhxEQ';return true;">market Smalltalk!

On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 3:49 AM, Richard Eng <<a href="javascript:" target="_blank" gdf-obfuscated-mailto="WhFryrkkz4cJ" rel="nofollow" onmousedown="this.href='javascript:';return true;" onclick="this.href='javascript:';return true;">horrido...@...> wrote:

I've completely revised my plans for the Smalltalk competition...

There are 3 key modifications:

1. Smaller prizes – this allows us to stretch the prize money over several years' worth of contests

Good - but I would run the gofundme campaign around the lower total amount for one year. This is a level I feel comfortable contributing to a stranger.  Of course administration costs are then proportionally greater, but maybe sponsorship can help that (see below)

 

1. The contest will be held at various participating secondary schools, supervised by teachers – this solves the volunteers and venues problem

Just to dig into details, how will you define a "participating" school?  Have you already had some feedback from some teachers?   As part of your strategy, you might fund provision of a printed copy of these important books to "participating" schools:

* Valloud - A Mentoring Course on Smalltalk (a "must" read to get the Smalltalk philosopy, recommended if you haven't already read it) <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/andres-valloud/a-mentoring-course-on-smalltalk/paperback/product-3788890.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" onmousedown="this.href='http://www.google.com/url?q\75http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lulu.com%2Fshop%2Fandres-valloud%2Fa-mentoring-course-on-smalltalk%2Fpaperback%2Fproduct-3788890.html\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNGmbtA4cU8twvy_46bEjjZooQblyw';return true;" onclick="this.href='http://www.google.com/url?q\75http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lulu.com%2Fshop%2Fandres-valloud%2Fa-mentoring-course-on-smalltalk%2Fpaperback%2Fproduct-3788890.html\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNGmbtA4cU8twvy_46bEjjZooQblyw';return true;">http://www.lulu.com/shop/andres-valloud/a-mentoring-course-on-smalltalk/paperback/product-3788890.html

* Pharo By Example - updated for Pharo 4.

Actually, maybe you even consider replacing third prize with 10 or more winners of a prize pack with these books - since this both stretches the money further to more winners, and also education is the best way to spread the word of Smalltalk, and the books can be shared wider again by the winners.  Actually, maybe this would be one of the more favourable backdoor outcomes, as a way to select leading young programmers to indoctrinate into the Smalltalk way.  Others will want to emulate them.

 

1. The date has been moved so that it doesn't clash with midterms, and it still gives students sufficient time to plan ahead for college (knowing whether or not they have scholarship money)

The length of the competition has also been shortened from 6 hours to 3. The former was probably too long for students to cope with.

You need to get some ideas for competition puzzles well in advance, and run some pilots in individual schools.  You can publish these puzzles some everyone gets the chance to practice and the pilot schools are not at a great advantage.

 

Here's the new flyer:

<a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-xvl3YnXf4Tg/VPYOOAFzuRI/AAAAAAAABC4/kRvJybd3tno/s1600/Smalltalk%2BCompetition.png" style="margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" onmousedown="this.href='https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-xvl3YnXf4Tg/VPYOOAFzuRI/AAAAAAAABC4/kRvJybd3tno/s1600/Smalltalk%2BCompetition.png';return true;" onclick="this.href='https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-xvl3YnXf4Tg/VPYOOAFzuRI/AAAAAAAABC4/kRvJybd3tno/s1600/Smalltalk%2BCompetition.png';return true;">

I still need judges for the competition. Judges will need to grade the Smalltalk assignment for correctness and accuracy. I'm not sure how to find these judges. This Smalltalk forum seems to be sparsely inhabited, so that may be why I'm getting very little response. Where else can I ask for volunteers??

Search for Canadian smalltalk job postings [1] and contact these companies directly.  Such a competition could directly benefit them to supply potential future employees (often a problem for Smalltalk companies).  By supplying judges, they get to survey the talent.  Also, industry involvement is an additional incentive for students - being exposed to potential employers, and the possibility of part time work during their studies.   A visit to their offices could be an auxiliary prize (such as it is with google competitions, though tis not so sexy as google).  They may even sponsor, which apart from a direct cash benefit can add a credible logo to the flyer.

<a href="https://smalltalkjobs.wordpress.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" onmousedown="this.href='https://www.google.com/url?q\75https%3A%2F%2Fsmalltalkjobs.wordpress.com%2F\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNG3wJXEMjLKCLaacs9J25_lUTBV9A';return true;" onclick="this.href='https://www.google.com/url?q\75https%3A%2F%2Fsmalltalkjobs.wordpress.com%2F\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNG3wJXEMjLKCLaacs9J25_lUTBV9A';return true;">https://smalltalkjobs.wordpress.com/ [1]

good luck with it.

cheers -ben 

On Thursday, 26 February 2015 22:30:02 UTC-5, Richard Eng wrote:

<a href="http://www.gofundme.com/nb4k5c" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" onmousedown="this.href='http://www.google.com/url?q\75http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gofundme.com%2Fnb4k5c\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNEZdF3ZzjOVEdohx1XKPCbZ5Iq1wQ';return true;" onclick="this.href='http://www.google.com/url?q\75http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gofundme.com%2Fnb4k5c\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNEZdF3ZzjOVEdohx1XKPCbZ5Iq1wQ';return true;">http://www.gofundme.com/nb4k5c

Crowdfunding is also a good way to <a href="https://medium.com/@trycelery/how-brands-use-crowdfunding-for-kick-ass-marketing-48f36d5a30d0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" onmousedown="this.href='https://www.google.com/url?q\75https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F%40trycelery%2Fhow-brands-use-crowdfunding-for-kick-ass-marketing-48f36d5a30d0\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNEL2Ecz0t1rrWwdX-Q56N7_jFhxEQ';return true;" onclick="this.href='https://www.google.com/url?q\75https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F%40trycelery%2Fhow-brands-use-crowdfunding-for-kick-ass-marketing-48f36d5a30d0\46sa\75D\46sntz\0751\46usg\75AFQjCNEL2Ecz0t1rrWwdX-Q56N7_jFhxEQ';return true;">market Smalltalk!