The Quru LeapHack contest - February 29th 2012

Every four years we are blessed with a leap year and with it an extra day. For a few of us it's a great day (i.e., those who were born on February 29^th) but for most of us it passes more or less as just another day, trudging off to work, to school or whatever. In 2008 we decided to do something different.

We continually need to learn and to push the envelope of what we do as individuals. Inspired partly by what was an annual MacHack contest, in 2008 we held within Quru the first LeapHack contest. We also followed some of the calls of the environmental movement and closed our office on this special day, forcing everyone to do this at home.

For 2012 we have an additional goal: we want to do something around the Raspberry Pi computer, a new and very exciting credit card sized $35 device. However, we have two issues:

1. The Raspberry Pi is not available to order until 6am on Wednesday 29th February and
2. Quru has more than a little work on with a major release happening in just one week's time.

Because these issues effectlively proclude us from running the competition on the day itself, Leaphack 2012 will have slightly different rules!

Rules of LeapHack 2012

• You can form a team with one or more colleague.
• You must be on-line at 6am on Wednesday 29th February in order to purchase your own Raspberry Pi; no Raspberry Pi means you can't take part. The good news is that Quru employees may claim back their cost via expenses (maximum of one per person). If you can't get a device for one reason or another, then perhaps you should team up with someone who has...
• If you declare your firm intention to take part before noon on 29th February, then we will attempt to secure you a power supply and SD card. If you need to find out what else you need then the Raspberry Pi wiki has a good explanaition.
• When you have secured your Raspberry Pi then you can book a day to work at home on your own Raspberry Pi project providing you declare what you are going to do. Simply booting it up does not count and the contest moderator (CEO Roland Whitehead) has the option of turning you down for not being ambitious enough.
• If you are willing to involve Qt5 and the Quru Image Server in your project then you can book 2 days. Note that Quru is taking part in a project to do exactly that as part of the QtOnPi project funded by Nokia.
• If you wish to spend more time on the project then you can but you must do so in your own time
• You must complete your project before 9am on Thursday 29th March 2012.
• Projects will be presented on 29th March. Your colleagues will each provide their own ranking of projects (1 being the most impressive considering the ability of the entrant, (the number of entrants - 1) for the least so) - they can't include their own and neither bribery nor favouritism are allowed.
• The rankings will all be added up
• A moderator (in our case, CEO Roland Whitehead), who is not allowed to win the contest but must still take part, will add points, entirely at will, for:
  1. Doing something too boring in concept
  2. Not being ambitious enough
  3. Being too ambitious and not achieving what you set out to do
• He will also deduct points (good news) equal to half the number of contestants if your project contributes to the wider Raspberry Pi project and has been submitted to the community.
• The winner is the one with the lowest total ranking. If the winner is a team entry then the team need to appoint one of its members as the winner.

The winner will be awarded a suitable prize - Matt Fozard won in 2008.

If you want to join in and do something similar in your work-place next time, then please contact us using the contact form

Happy hacking!

Barry Flanagan's Large Leaping Hare, sold at Bonhams in 2007.
Bonhams use bespoke enterprise software written by Quru.