First Place Prize Information

[Madskillz]

After mulling over specifics about a first place prize, we have come to a conclusion.
Maxcoderz and Revolution Software are committed to selecting a great first place prize. As this is a programming competition we wanted a device that a programmer could use as well as a student. Up until last week, I was really pushing for the first place prize to be a Casio Prizm. After seeing what has been coming to the Nspire family, I have been swayed.

So the first place prize for the Joint Programming Competition (Spring 2011) will be a brand new TI-Nspire CX.

I apologize for it taking this long to announce the first place prize. It really shouldn't have. Continue to work on your entries. I can't wait to see what you guys can come up with.

Thanks,
-Madskillz

[Xeda112358]

Wow, that is great! I wonder how long it will take for people to hear about this!? I'm gonna tell my IRL friends!

[Deep Thought]

Awesome, hope the competition goes well

[FinaleTI]

That's an enticing prize... I better kick my card conversions back up to speed. I still have 132 to go!

[NETWizz]

An apology from United-TI. Madskillz response was a bit obnoxious but deserved. We have always been an open place trying to avoid being a cult-like programing groups with zealots. Instead, we have always been about bringing people from around the globe together.

I decided to not write a letter to any sponsors to ask for a prize because I am embarrassed by the overall way this contest has been run, and it is as much our fault as any of the other programming groups. We feel a certain level of anxiety because we wanted to be a part of something but did not do all the leg-work like we used to do; I think we fell short, and I want to extend my greatest apologies to all our members and the participants. I talked it over with another co-founder and we determined it is just not worth it asking for a hand-out for a graphing calculator, which is what we were going to originally do. Our reasoning is that we do not have a solid enough business plan that details every part of this contest and why our sponsor should offer us anything. In order to make something like this work, we really need a signed affidavit showing cohesive teamwork, and we don't have that because on many levels we could never come to any agreements with other programming groups. Not pointing fingers, but it is as much our fault as theirs.


Also, our traffic has significantly decreased with the introduction of the iPhone, Android, and Blackberry in recent years, so we see the trends and have discussed it in relation to our lives. We have talked about abandonment, transferring the website, keeping it going... one thing for sure is that if we do nothing at all we will go down with the sinking ship. We don't know what to do. What we ultimately want are people that think just like we do only highly motivated like we were in 2005-2006 when we were just past being kids and newly starting College. That is the golden age to run a website for fun because you still have the ambition of a High School student only more life experience and professionalism.

Now that we (namely Jon and I) are only a few years away from being 30, things like this website don't matter as much to us as it used to. This is a small, insignificant part of our life, where it used to consume us. Please understand... I am in a relationship with someone I love and care for, and Jon just had a child. We are businessmen by day to support our families, which is where we want to spend most of our time.

Yes, we will keep all our commitments to this community, but do NOT mistake a commitment made by someone other than the United-TI Staff as being our commitment.


That said, this sounds like a great prize.

United-TI will now offer ONE of the following:

1. We will go in 1/3 rd the cost of the Nspire-CS and 1/3rd of the Second Prize

OR

2. We will cover the Second Prize 100% and let the other two groups offer the 1st prize.


Please let me know what you want from us, Madskillz... a formal offer has been made.


Either way, we will be the guarantor on the second place prize... That means that for any reason if another group does not keep their commitment we will take 100% financial responsibility and pay what was promised. The business side of us must know, "What group (or who) accepts the full-liability and will function as the guarantor of the first-place prize?" We must know because UTI has at this point not stood behind the first place prize, which is actually pretty sad being the contest is being run here.

Sorry again.

[Madskillz]

I was under the impression that UTI was committed to a second place prize. You made it clear in your PMs that that is what you intended to pay for. Therefore MC and RS talked and decided on a first place prize that we would pay for.

Don't worry about paying anything for the first place prize, we have it taken care of. Just take care of the second place prize.

I don't know how my post came off obnoxious, it certainly wasn't intended that way. There are a lot of things I would want to say, but really whats the point anymore.

Maxcoderz and Revolution Software will provide the first place prize and delivery to the winner of the competition.

Good luck to everyone,

-Madskillz

[DJ Omnimaga]

I wouldn't say the TI community is dying. I thought it was dying back in 2006-07 when most newcomers were only interested in calcs for roughly 3-4 months then vanished, or when we had to rebuild every summer because most people were at campings or other trips, posting less on forums, discouraging people that stayed around. The issue is that over the time most people went elsewhere in the community. Those contests can help bringing some people back, same if some projects here gets more updates, but in the future more contests will be needed and maybe certain other ideas to attract members, such as offering project sub-forums, although there would need to be a quality control. Xeda did a good job so far at keeping some life on the forums, although now she has no Internet access for 4 months.

Reviving a site is possible, but it takes a long while and a lot of dedication from the main people in charge. It even requires to encourage staff to remain active, even forcing them to keep a certain minimum of activity in some cases. As an example of how much work is needed, during the first year after Omnimaga re-opened, I posted about 25-40% of the entire forum messages every month, replying to almost everything I could. In addition to that, the people that were part of the programming team there, which was smaller than on the original site, were forced to post a minimum of 10 times per month and update one of their calculator project at least once every 4 month to remain in the team and be able to release their work under Omnimaga name. We also tried to branch out to computer and music themes, although this did not work well. Despite all those efforts, the site still had 3 activity lulls where some days there were like 2 posts (one month we had under 500 posts), and that happened even with a contest being announced on ticalc.org and TI-Boy SE getting Slashdotted (or digged?). Now the site does well, but there are more and more computer and gaming discussions going on that boosts activity, plus the arrival of Axe Parser language there helped a lot too (since it was pretty much BASIC programmers' dream for over a decade).

Also I notice that UTI shows less often in Google results when I search about calculator stuff now. It used to come first or second, along with ticalc.org. I think the board updates might have killed the META tags or similar things. (In certain softwares, the META tags are stored inside the forum theme or header/footers, so a theme update might overwrite them). It would also help to bring back the downloads section or maybe put a downloads link at the top, linking to the Projects releases board.

Basically to bring UTI activity back to its previous level, it might take this much effort and time, which basically means that staff or dedicated members who don't have a family, two jobs or university studies would be needed, although if your Google search ranking was fixed, I'm sure that would already help, since you used to gain a lot of new members everyday.

[NETWizz]

Excactly...

We don't have the time to do that, nor are we going to force anyone to post a minimum of X times a month to stay a member... Basically, we have no requirements...

That said, given the number of contest entries, people have a great chance of winning.

Revsoft & Maxcoderz are providing an nSpire-CX

United-Ti is providing the Second Place Prize... $40