The Mailowl Scrolls

Their quote says it all “We give stupid prizes to smart people” Community Credit encourages developers to create and share information (with blogs, articles, book reviews and forums) and to organise and participate in community events by having a monthly competition and sending prizes that only a geek could love, like and R2-D2 USB stick or a Dilbert squishy toy.  Best of all, winners have their points “curved” so they can’t win again for another 3 months giving everyone else a chance to claim the grand prize and doesn’t confine the winner’s circle to community leaders.

How they work is anyone can join and submit links to stuff they’ve done for points.  Activities are broken up into categories and each activity has number of points associated with it; so a blog post is 500 points, attending a community meeting is 1000 points and writing a long article is 10,000 points (and there are a lot of activities to choose from).  Submissions are moderated and as the month progresses a leader-board is available to see how far you’re ahead.  At the end of the month, the top scorers are rewarded, everyone’s score is reset to 0 and the winners have their future points curved by a percentage so they don’t earn as much for activities for the next couple of months.

I managed to claim 1st prize for May 2007 and I won myself a “Interactive Star Wars Light Saber Game” which looks kinda cool and I’m eagerly watching my snailmailbox for delivery.  May was a busy month for me with 3 SA Developer .NET meetings organised (7000 points) and the Dev Days Afterparty (8000 points). I also managed to squeeze in a couple of blog posts (500 - 1000 points each) and some sample code (3000 points).
Unfortunately, for the next 3 months I have a 95% “curve” on my score (the amount depends on your winning position), so organising a community meeting only nets me 350 points and a blog post 50 points; giving everyone else an opportunity to win instead.

Some of the other leaders and moderators of SA Developer .NET have joined Community Credit and we’re excited to find there’s a plug-in for Community Server which we can add so all the SA Developer .NET members will automatically receive points when they post and reply on the forums.  In the meantime congratulations to Craig Nicholson and Willie Roberts for also winning in May.  Willie won 3rd prize, a Planetary Orbit Clock and Craig won 9th prize, The Metallic Red Ladybug Mouse.  Winners also get a plaque to put up in their offices to show how much they support the developer community.

Community Credit is not only for .NET, so all you Java, Python and C++ developers can submit items too.