This is a known model: organizing a developer contest in order to find great projects and the great people behind them. Do we have any precedent in Wikimedia?
This is a proposal targeting the Technical Collaboration annual plan FY2017-18. We would need to be in sync with the rest of Community Engagement, Product, and Comms. If you like the idea, let's plan for it and let's request the necessary budget.
How this could work:
- Being the first edition, the requirement would be to just be a stable and active project during 2016. In future edition we might want to restrict eligibility for new projects only, if there are enough of them.
- We could have different categories:
- Projects using Wikimedia APIs (one option would be to start small only with this category, then grow other categories if needed in future editions).
- Extensions
- Gadgets
- Bots
- Templates
- Skins
- The criteria to select winners could be a combination of qualitative factors (innovation, originality, usefulness...) and popularity. A jury would be in charge of the selection.
- Potential prizes:
- Organization of a small hackathon or workshop with the winner and a selection of developers, UX designers and users to improve the project and get new ideas.
- Invitation to the Wikimedia Hackathon / Summit / Wikimania with some extra spice (i.e. some days of leisure and you can invite a partner).
- Invitation to a special activity organized by a Wikimedia partner e.g. a workshop at the Internet Archive, a guided tour to NASA premises, an activity by any GLAM institution... also with some extra leisure spice for the winner and one partner.
- Wikimedia merchandising, books, knowledge-related subscriptions...
- Of course media coverage in the form of press release, blog post, promotional video...