Monthly Tutorial Competition Prizes

Bigwebmaster always has his hands full with updates, translations and other boring stuff around Ozzu, so, we duct taped him to the ceiling in front of his computer and told him he can't come down until he's all caught up.



As further incentive for him to keep up with this stuff, I took his wallet while we were taping him up and told him I'm going to start giving stuff away as long as he's up there.

Bigwebmaster mentioned something about monthly competitions for the Tutorial Writers Group (open group BTW, anyone can apply to join) before this all happened, so that's probably a good place to start considering it's where I'll likely get into the least trouble for giving his stuff away.

If Ozzu started doing a monthly competition for Tutorial Writers what kind of prizes should there be ?

I heard someone blurt out $50 cash, another suggestion was Ozzu gear such as T-shirts and coffee mugs.
Someone mentioned a selection of Gift Certificates from various online retailers, I was quite partial to ThinkGeek GCs myself so I could fulfill my dream of opening a whole six-pack at once with hands full of Ring Things, then I remembered I'm supposed to be giving this stuff to other people. I can think of one person who would love to get their hands on A Titanium Spork.

In any event, we need a sizable pool of things to pick from here people.

To clear up a few things I've received PMs about.

Registration

If you want to get in on the competitions, you'll need to be a member of the Tutorial Writers group.

To join the group you'll need to be logged in, and go to the User Groups panel in your control panel.

In there you'll see a large list of groups with two radio buttons beside them. Under the "Non-memberships" section you should see the Tutorial Writers group.

You want to check the right-most checkbox beside that group.



With that selected, scroll down to the end of that list and there will be a dropdown and submit button on the right side.
Make sure "Join Selected" is the selected option in the dropdown and then click submit.

After you've done that, it wouldn't be a bad idea to send me a PM letting me know.

Tutorial Subjects

Ozzu currently has a small variety of existing tutorial forums
html-tutorials/
php-tutorials/
perl-tutorials/
javascript-tutorials/
cpp-tutorials/
asp-tutorials/
photography-tutorials/
digitalart-tutorials/
windows-tutorials/

If you feel your tutorial falls into one of those categories, great. If not, being part of the Tutorial Writers group opens up a new forum at Ozzu that you can use to stash the tutorial until a section the tutorial would fit into opens. There's nothing that says you can't just post tutorials in existing non-tutorial forums at Ozzu, for instance you could post a tutorial on setting up virtual hosts with Apache in the Hosting Forum.

Tutorial Content

Start here -- announcements/tutorial-making-tutorials-for-ozzu-howto-t85736.html
Follow up by browsing through the existing tutorial forums.

One person mentioned they already have numerous tutorials on their site. Now, I don't know if this was meant to show me that they're capable of writing tutorials, or whether they were suggesting that they want to republish these tutorials at Ozzu to enter the competition.

If anyone intends to mention their existing tutorials to show they're capable, please make a note of that.
As you'll learn by reading the start here thread, republishing existing work is not permitted and work found to have been republished will automatically be disqualified from competitions.

When do competitions start ?

If we don't see a decent level of interest in them beforehand they wont.
We're currently judging whether there's enough interest in these competitions according to two things,

1) The number of members who apply to join the Tutorial Writers group
2) The number of suggestions for the prize pool in this thread

So be sure to get ahold of that buddy you have who always wants to compete with you and get them to sign up too.

i wanna participate but i'm not expert in the following topic tutorial hehe...

Oooo yeah, 'scept I already have a titanium spork. I got mine from campmor I think though, maybe somewhere else.

I debated getting involved in this on my ride to work this morning (about a 45 min haul) and I'd love to participate, but with things being as busy as they are here, I'm doing good to hold my own with headlines and I want to make sure I fulfill that obligation first. I'm entering (and excited about) a new long-term project surrounding Drools, and I know that's going to suck up my time. We'll leave it at that for now.

Anywho, I think you've got a good idea here, so stick it out. Just didn't want you to think I was avoiding the topic for any other reason. I'd love to see some good tutorials come from this.

$50 bucks is cool. But at the same time I would rather have something to remember the competition by.
$50 bucks is better then pat on the back

A titanium spork engraved with Ozzu Tutorial Writer, or similar?

On my holidays (next 4-6 weeks) I'll write something about Apophysis - the fractal generator I've used a bit.

I already have an idea for a tutorial that I want to write! I think a gift card at thinkgeek would be awesome.

I want to say a laptop, but that's just because I'm in dire need of my own (I'm sharing right now and it's not working out). Since that's going to happen I say domain name fully paid for, for one year (that's not to expensive, right?). Winner Picks. *shrug* just some suggestions.

All suggestions are good suggestions. If it crosses your mind to suggest it, that must mean you or someone you know would like it.

I don't know if giving away an actual domain name would fly due to ownership/personal-information concerns, but gift certificates for Godaddy or another domain registar that would allow the winners to register a domain themselves wouldn't be out of the question.

For everyone who has joined the Tutorial Writers group, and everyone who is on the fence about doing so, I want to keep this thread open for the rest of June gathering prize suggestions.

These all come to mind

https://www.gelaskins.com/certificates.php
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/giftcards/itunes/gallery
http://www.istockphoto.com/buy-stock-credits-pay-as-you-go.php
http://www.lynda.com/giftsubscription/index.aspx

I think all of those have "all digital" versions that can be gifted without sending a physical object.

I don't really expect to win so I who cares what the prize is, but I'd love to do a "Using Ajax with Mason" beginner tutorial under perl.

i'd like 2 participate in Contests

Roughly a week left in June, be sure to get your suggestions in before then.

Don't forget to join the Tutorial Writers group either, we will most likely be keeping the majority of discussion for Tutorial Writers competitions within the private Tutorial Writers forum once the ball starts rolling.

I recon Ozzu gear is the way Would dig to parade around in my ozzu tshirt

Oh yes, I'M BACK!