Friday, December 29, 2006

Apress/On Ruby Blogging Contest

Update: The February Challenge has been posted. Go take a look and enter the contest.

Apress Logo A little while ago, I thought it would be cool to run a Ruby and Ruby on Rails contest to help generate some interesting new posts in the Ruby and Rails blogosphere. When I approached Apress with the idea, they agreed to sponsor it (heck, they even upped the ante and decided to award bigger prizes than I had initially asked about). So, starting now, and running for the next several months, I'd like to welcome you to the Apress/On Ruby Blogging Contest.

Here's what they had to say about it:

Thanks to Rails, Ruby is finally coming into its own as an awesome language. In recognition of this, Apress and its imprint, friends of ED, will be publishing a minimum of 10 Ruby and Ruby on Rails books throughout 2006 and 2007. From entry level books, such as Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional and Beginning Ruby on Rails: From Novice to Professional, to more specific titles like Practical Ruby for System Administration and Pro Ruby on Rails: Building Enterprise Solutions, the Apress team is ensuring that programmers will learn both the basic and advanced skills to run a clean Ruby shop.

We've seen the excitement level for Ruby/Ruby on Rails grow exponentially in the past few years, and we are extremely excited that we'll know be able to help grow the community and audience. In partnership with prolific blogger Pat Eyler, we'll be running contests for the first six months of 2007, in order to increase the knowledge base for programmers curious to know more about the Ruby/Ruby on Rails phenomenon. There are still a lot of questions out there about why and when Ruby/Ruby on Rails should be used, and our hope is that a proliferation of postings will both lessen the confusion and encourage programmers to try Ruby/Ruby on Rails out.

Sometime in the first week of the month, Pat will post, on behalf of an Apress author, a blogging challenge relating to a specific topic on Ruby/Ruby on Rails, and all programmers will be encouraged to post a thoughtful response on either his/her personal blog or on a public website. In order to be eligible, these must go up within 3 weeks of the original post, and the links must be posted as comments to Pat’s original post. The postings will be judged by a 3 person panel, which includes Pat Eyler, Apress Editor Keir Thomas Jason Gilmore, and a rotating guest judge. Within one week of the closing date, the judges will announce their decision, and the winner will receive his/her choice of 3 Apress and friends of ED titles.

The first contest will begin January 2007. The guest judge for January will be Apress author Jarkko Laine.

I'm actually sitting on the first challenge right now. I'll post it Monday morning (right after I ring in the New Year, if I manage to stay awake for that). I can't wait to see what you guys do with it.

Update: The first contest challenge is up here.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very cool. Looking forward to this!

Anonymous said...

Great Idea Pat.

Anonymous said...

That's great

- I'll have to start writing in english -

Anonymous said...

Good idea. I'm not clear what kind of blogging "challenge" this is going to be, though. Are technical questions/puzzles about Ruby and Rails going to be put, and contestants have to answer?

Thanks
Vasudev Ram
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dancing Bison Enterprises
Software consulting
and training
www.dancingbison.com
sourceforge.net/projects/xtopdf
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

gnupate said...

Ilya and Satish,
thanks for the support. I'm pretty excited about the idea (and the contest) too.

Edgar,
hmmm, maybe we'll have to find a publisher to sponsor a parallel contest in other languages.

Vasudev,
Some will be puzzles, others will be questions, still more will be themes to write about. You'll see a great example in less that 48 hours.

Anonymous said...

I applaud the initiative and its sponsors.
Best of luck Pat, can't wait !!

UG

Anonymous said...

Who's replacing Keir Thomas now? He's not an Apress editor any more (as of a couple months ago - he was the editor for my book and he left to pursue a different career).

gnupate said...

Peter,
you're right .... my fault for using old copy. Jason Gilmore is taking Keir's place.

jintha's-eye said...

I will certainly epmty my chest on all the good that Ruby is doing for me.