How not to lose $ 100,000 - tips of judges on participation in competitions of ideas

Everybody started to run whenever they wanted, and who ran wherever they wanted, and stopped whenever they wished.
After about half an hour, Dront suddenly gave the command:
- The finish! Stop! Competitions are over!
And, out of breath, surrounded him and began to inquire:
- And who won?
To answer this question, even the Dronta had to think carefully.
Finally the Dodo said:
- Everybody has won! And everyone will receive prizes, he added.

Lewis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland

Of course, a participant in any competition would like things to be exactly the same as in the crazy races of Wonderland. But in reality, of course, all cannot win, only the most worthy win. Or do not win.
Why? And most importantly - how to fix it? About this post below.

On September 4, the Russian stage of the Intel App Innovation Contest was taking place, including at the Habré of the Intel App Innovation Contest . Participated, of course, as Dronts invited judges.
We reviewed more than two hundred applications, which took a total of at least 3 full working days, and were tired so that vikky13 even had to take a vacation. But as a result, we can help you - share with you tips on participating in competitions of ideas, which are periodically held by large companies, and are accompanied by equally large prizes. Although, in our case, it was the ideas of desktop applications under Windows 8, the tips are universal and suitable for any competition of ideas.

So, imagine that you have a good, or at least a good idea (nothing bad will help anymore), and you want strict, but fair judges (and there are no others in similar contests) to choose it. Then you should note that:
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1. The rescue of the drowning is the work of the gills of the drowning.

If you do not explain clearly and convincingly what you mean in your application, the judges simply will not understand and appreciate it, and you will remain outside the ship of the winners. Of course, in the internal recommendations for the judges may be requested to clarify all the issues with the participants, but in reality this almost never happens. Remember the total number of applications and you will understand why. But even if we ignore the time spent, the contests of large companies are serious events, not like morning performances in kindergarten, where even a kid who has forgotten a rhyme will surely be prompted and given a prize.

Typical examples of such applications are either too short one-line formal replies, of which it is difficult to understand something, or compositions on several sheets, in which the essence is buried behind numerous non-essential details. How to fix it? Show your idea to anyone (not a cat) and ask if he understood the meaning of what was written. If not, edit the application and repeat the process until you get bored to perfection.

2. "See the goal, believe in yourself and ignore the obstacles."

Each contest has a goal, respectively, there are criteria for the selection of works. And they are a surprise, usually directly stated in the rules of the competition. "The works will be evaluated according to the following criteria ...". And even if suddenly they are not indicated, they are easily derived from common sense and the name of the competition. But many participants do not think about it. Therefore, for example, for the AIC 2013 competition with the prescribed main criterion for evaluating the form “The degree of innovation of the idea and the novelty of the model of using the device”, many ideas of one of three types were submitted:
“There is such a site, and we will do almost the same, but in the form of a desktop application”
"There is such a program for Android and \ or MacOS, and we will do the same for Win8"
“There are scattered services, and we will put them all together in one application.”

In general, if these are innovative ideas, then what are the old banal ones?

How to fix it? Think again. Even if you like the idea of ​​turning something already existing into the required one for the competition, then it is quite possible to come up with some sort of new feature that really distinguishes you from the original service / application. And not just to come up with, but also properly describe in your application.

3. "Grammar - a system of snares, prudently placed for a man who has emerged from the bottom, on his path to success."

Spoiled by Habra, where all the posts and almost all the comments are a model of literacy, we were horrified to repeat the submissions of the participants of the competition, which are far from being such a model.
And we want to open a secret - among the judges there are sometimes Grammar-Nazis who will avenge your mistakes in your assessment of your application. Although, we admit honestly, if your idea is brilliantly dazzling, then it will just overshadow mistakes, and they will, of course, forgive you. Winners are generally forgiven. But if the idea turns out to be “on the verge” of terrain, then mistakes will drag it down over the edge. And the logic here will be quite clear - if a person makes mistakes in words, then he will most likely have errors in the programs. So why miss it?
How to fix it? Long live the spell checker!

In general, after getting acquainted with the applications submitted to the competition, one gets the feeling that many participants perceive such events not as fair competitions, but as a lottery where each application is a cherished ticket. Although this is absolutely not the case, even in terms of a lottery one should take into account that there are no free lottery tickets even in a mousetrap, that is, on a ticket application, so that it becomes a winning one, we still need to work.

Not harmful tips at all

We now formulate the promised advice once again as briefly and clearly as possible so that they become for you a guide to action and future victories.

If you immediately came up with the idea - wait for the second.
Triviality - the main scourge of the competition of ideas. 90 percent of sentences repeat each other; try to get into the other 10. Rate soberly the originality of your application, and if you have doubts, take the time to invent another.

Read the rules - they rule!
Do not be tempted to copy-paste once-cooked text everywhere indiscriminately. Carefully read the conditions of the competition and think for how to deploy your idea so that it is in the winning light here.

The judge is also a man, take care of him.
Write your applications in the highest quality Russian (in this case) language, which is available to you, so that the judge could read it without heartache and, most importantly, understand exactly how you wanted.

And finally, especially for those to whom the above tips seem obvious, here are some more real-life examples of applications from the AIC 2013 competition.

Bug fixes

Probably, the authors of the applications, which we give here, will not be happy at all. We ask them to excuse them in advance (especially since we, of course, do not give their names) - we don’t want to offend anyone, we just don’t understand them. Therefore, with these examples we want to do our job: to show how not to speak at the competition of ideas.

Easy learning programming, with the ability to save their results.

I don’t know what the author meant, but I think that he wants to implement his version of the Notepad program - it fits well with this description.

The application solves the problem of planning a user's budget for the year, taking into account unintended costs.

The application certainly somehow decides, but I forgot how to write the author, inviting the judges to use telepathy.

Musical sounding of fairy tales for children. Parents can click on the button and the tale will be read. It will help the child fall asleep. Every fairy tale must first be read in a good voice acting. After that, the tale should be played on the tablet.

In fact, if you take ready-made fairy tales, then this application is called a media player. And there are many of them, and they are able to read not only fairy tales, but they were also, and even train schedules.

The innovativeness of my idea is that schoolchildren or students will be able to approach learning from the other side, from the side of innovation.

At this level of specifics really want to answer "This idea is different from others by its differences"

In the app, teachers and students can intuitively just send and receive homework. This system will allow students of schools, students to interactively maintain contact with teachers at a professional level, that is, a simple and innovative homework system will be presented in this application.

It seems to us that the only possible innovation in sending homework is changing roles - students will assign homework to teachers. We doubt that this can be implemented in our schools.

When the player has prepared the dish, he presses the “Done!” Button, getting the base points, then the application offers him to take a picture of the result on a webcam or phone. Photos fall into the section intended for voting. Other members of the quest vote for the best dishes every day, and each - in its stage and the stage below.

Previously, photography could only be treated, now it is possible to also taste. To the best dishes you need to put a photo of a drooling expert.

At the beginning of the application, the user passes an easy social survey, which indicates the gender, age, profession, etc. Based on the results of this survey, our application shows the probability of illness of individual organs.

It seems that this application is not on medical topics; He is the most in games, in the "fortune telling". In general, do not forget to estimate in your mind how your idea will look like in real life, because we are not creating abstract knowledge, but a product for the user.