[Coco] A CoCo Coding Contest

[Aaron Wolfe]

Some of you may remember I took a survey of interest in a CoCo
programming contest a few months ago.
The responses were encouraging if not overwhelming, with twelve people
saying "yes, i definitely want to enter" and four "maybe I will".

Well.. the time has come, and the Angry Birds thread is a good reminder.

I'm going to try to make it happen.  Based on survey responses,
comments, and discussions on IRC, here are the tentative details.
Please feel free to comment, suggest changes, etc on the list or to me
directly.  We can change anything now if needed, but I'd really like
to finalize this over the coming weekend.

The rules are simple and few:

1. All entries must be programs that are executable on a Tandy Color
Computer.  Points may be awarded for compatibility with CoCo 1 or 2
and for making good use of resources, i.e. running in 16 or 4k.  Use
of add on hardware, upgrades, etc is allowed but discouraged unless
the project fundamentally requires them (this is to encourage entries
that the widest range of folks will be able to run on their own
systems).

2. All entries must be released under a “free beer” license.  A "free
speech" license such as GPL or compatible is very much encouraged so
that interested people can appreciate your entry in source form, but
binaries without source will be accepted provided the binaries are
licensed in such a way that all interested CoCoNuts can have a copy.

3. The results of judging will be announced at the 2013 CoCoFest! in
Chicago.  Entries should be in reviewable form one month prior to the
fest and must be demo-able during the Fest.   Fest attendance is
highly, highly recommended (because its fun!) but not in any way
required to participate in the contest.

Review publication:
Each entry will be reviewed in depth by volunteers. The reviews will
be published in a Rainbow-like publication.  We will hopefully also
have some celebrity reviewers who offer insight on each program.

Judging/prizes:
The judges may consider many factors, including some that are not
directly part of the program itself, such as the (in)experience level
of the programmer(s) involved or the quality of a blog detailing their
efforts along the way, etc.  There will be one "grand prize"/"best of
show" type award to the single entry the judges agree is most
outstanding, but there may be any number of additional awards given
for an unknown number of undisclosed reasons.  From offers already
made it seems there will be real prizes including CoCo gear and even
cash.


If you'd like to participate but something about these rules makes you
less interested, now is the time to see if we can't sort that out.
-Aaron