DevShare Contributor of the Month Contest

Contest Overview

What is the DevShare Contributor of the Month Contest?

The DevShare Contributor of the Month contest was created as one way to reward BIRT Exchange members who actively contribute to the community. There are many within the BIRT and Actuate developer communities who have become experts with the technology during their course of implementing an application. The lessons learned while developing these applications are valuable to other developers attempting to do the same thing. For this reason, we created an area on BIRT Exchange called the DevShare where developers can share these lessons learned in the form of quick tips, example code, report designs, technical blog posts, online articles, tutorials, or anything else you found helpful while developing your application. At the end of each month, the person with the most popular DevShare item submitted that month will win a prize. Once a year, the person with the most popular DevShare item be selected as the DevShare Contributor of the Year and will also receive a larger prize yet to be determined.

What are the goals of this contest?

The purpose of the DevShare Contributor of the Month contest is to promote the sharing of developer resources related to BIRT on the BIRT Exchange developer community site. This contest should increase the number of submissions of BIRT related designs or code examples, tips, tutorials, and articles in the DevShare area of BIRT Exchange.

What are the eligibility requirements for the contest?

In general, the contest is open to members of the BIRT Exchange community except for those employed by Actuate Corporation. Membership to BIRT Exchange is free and you can sign up here.

What are the prizes?

Once a month, the BIRT Exchange member with the most popular DevShare item will be selected as the DevShare Contributor of the Month and win their choice of prizes below:

- Set of 2 BIRT Books (described here - http://www.birt-exchange.org/blog/2008-08-11/second-edition-birt-books-now-available/)
...or...
- BIRT Rocks! Animated T-Qualizer T-shirt (S,M,L,XL, or 2X) (shown here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpTrV55cfuA)
...or...
- iPod Shuffle (Silver or Black) (shown here - http://twitpic.com/bghky)

The monthly winner will also be eligible for the DevShare Contributor of the Year prize which has yet to be decided.

Contest Details

What content can be submitted?

The DevShare area on BIRT Exchange is the central location to share and discover useful examples submitted by the BIRT community. Examples you submit can be in the form of report designs, code examples, plug-ins, helpful tips, tutorials, videos, or anything else you found helpful in the course of integrating BIRT and related technologies into your applications. The content you submit should be your original content and should conform to the Guidelines for Posting DevShare Content

How do I include my DevShare submission in the contest?

All DevShare items submitted each month will be automatically entered into the contest. The DevShare Submission Form is located here

How is the DevShare Contributor of the Month determined?

The DevShare Contributor of the Month prize will be awarded to the BIRT Exchange member who has submitted the most popular DevShare item each month. The most popular items are derived from a formula that takes into account the number of times a DevShare item has been viewed, downloaded, the number of comments and reviews, and how long an item has been on the site. The top 5 DevShare items are then posted as a survey poll in the Announcements forum on BIRT Exchange where any member of BIRT Exchange can vote for the item they feel is the winning monthly submission. The poll will remain active and allow for votes for the period of 7 days. The top 5 most popular items are selected on the 7th day of the next month after the contest month is over to ensure that each item had at least one full week on the site. The winner will be chosen based on the poll results 7 days later on the 14th day of the month.

How is the DevShare Contributor of the Year chosen?

The most popular item of the year is derived from the same formula as the monthly contest but gives a second chance for a DevShare items that became popular in the months after it was originally submitted. The DevShare Contributor of the Year winner may or may not have been a previous DevShare Contributor of the Month winner. The yearly winner will be chosen on January 7th of the following year.

How will I be notified if I am selected as the winner?

The BIRT Exchange member who has been selected as the monthly or yearly winner will be contacted using the email address from your BIRT Exchange profile. The winning entry and the 4 runner-ups will also be announced in a blog post and displayed on the home page of the Community area within BIRT-Exchange.org. You will be required to reply to the email indicating your choice of prizes and the supply a postal address where the prize can be mailed if you are selected as the winner.

Who were the previous winners?

Contest Month	Winning DevShare Entry	Contributor	Announcement	Voting Details
April 2010	BIRT Stored Procedure Data Sets and Label Printing	Paul Bappoo	05/10/10	---
March 2010	Using a Popup Debug Window in BIRT	David Mehi	04/20/10	03/10 voting
February 2010	DashBIRT 1.0	Cedric Picard	03/23/10	02/10 voting
January 2010	BIRT best practice	Evgeny Sitnikov	02/12/10	---
2009 Annual	Browse a Database with BIRT	Huw Bradfield	01/31/10	---
December 2009	Working with Extension Points: Aggregations	John Ward	01/22/10	12/09 voting
November 2009	No entry this month	---	---	---
October 2009	BIRT - A Newbie's Perspective	Paul Bappoo	11/17/09	10/09 voting
September 2009	Increase security on BIRT reports	Mikey Dekker	10/09/09	---
August 2009	Extracting a Report Design from a Report Document	John Ward	9/22/09	8/09 voting
July 2009	Report with table and chart from multiple data sources based on sub-queries	Dariusz Filipski	8/19/09	7/09 voting
June 2009	BIRT Webservice Driver with HTTPS support	Phillip Mayhew	7/17/09	---

How will I receive my prize?

Your prize will be sent by postal mail to the address you supply when you are notified as the winner.

Is there a limit to the number of DevShare items I can submit?

No. You can submit as many DevShare items as you like and all your items submitted will be eligible for the contest. To allow for multiple winners, each BIRT Exchange member can win the monthly prize only 2 times per 12 month period. You may still be eligible to win the yearly prize even if you have reached your maximum monthly prizes.

Timeline

When can I start participating in the contest?

The contest begins at 12:00 AM Pacific time on June 1st, 2009 and continues each month until otherwise noted. This contest may be discontinued at any time.

What is the contest timeline?

The contest frequency runs from the first day of each month 12:00 AM Pacific time until the last day of the same month at 11:59 PM Pacific time. The winner of each month will be chosen on the 7th day of the next month. For example, the June contest runs from June 1st, 12:00 AM PST until June 30th, 11:59 PM PST and the winner for June will be selected and notified on July 7th. The yearly winner will be selected and notified on January 7th for the previous year submissions.