Announcing the Lab49 WPF in Finance Innovation Contest
Ok, this is cool.
This morning, we are announcing the first-ever "WPF in Finance Innovation Contest". WPF has enormous potential in finance, to affect the way we visualize and interact with the complex, fast-moving sea of data within the industry. To help spur innovation within this new area, we’re holding a contest with great prizes, challenging developers to build interesting new applications to visualize and interact with financial data.
We’ve got an amazing panel of WPF luminaries to judge the entries. We’ve lined up over $15,000 in prizes for the winners and early entrants. And the top 3 finalists will get to appear on stage at next year’s Microsoft Financial Services Developer Conference to showcase their app to the world.
So, we’ve done our part.
Now go do yours - sign up and submit your entry.
December 4th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Hi,
¡¡Congratulations for the competition!!
I was very excited when I got to this as at this year I participated with some success at a gadget development competition… and I would love to participate at your competition, it’s just exciting!!
The only problem is that after signing and downloading I checked the rules and saw that it is only for canada, united states, mexico and puerto rico…
I think it is unfair that you state “to take home and all the fame that goes along with being the world’s best WPF Developer.” if you don’t allow all of the world to participate… at least this is the competition I would dream of participating… that is if you allow me to…
And If I do I’ll try to win, of course!!!
Kind regards,
Jose Luis Latorre
Barcelona’s .Net User Group Leader (http://www.bcndev.net)
December 4th, 2007 at 11:14 am
Jose,
Thanks for your kind words and your interest in our competition. The reasoning behind our rules restricting winners to North America has to do with the logistics of awarding our prizes and presenting winner in New York.
I realize it’s disappointing for the many qualified and enthusiastic WPF developers outside those areas, and perhaps in the future (if we hold another such contest) we can muster the wherewithal to handle an international competition.
On the other hand, maybe you can move to New York, the center of the world!
- Daniel (true-blooded New Yorker)
December 4th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
If you let me participate I will not doubt in coming to New York on my own, and I do explicity refuse to receive any prices that are not eligible for my geographical placement.
December 4th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
Tim,
I signed up and didn’t receive the confirmation email. I pressed the “Resend Mail” button a few times, but no email.
I did log off and logged back in, so I know my email is correct.
Any ideas?
Karl
December 4th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Tim,
Just got them all. Guess the hamster delivering the mail was just busy.
Karl
December 4th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Cy: A few people have seen some delays getting their reg codes, please post another note here if you don’t get yours soon.
Regarding your first question, it would be better to keep things simpler, it’s not that much data that a database would help much IMO (just a couple megs or so) but if you really need to, make sure the README directions are clear and easy enough to follow and there are no pre-requisites that we can’t get from our MSDN subscription to run your sample. We’ll give it an honest effort to run it but I can’t promise to be able to build and run arbitrarily complex sets of dependencies. Does that clear it up for you?
December 4th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
A quick question about the use of the data. I know the focus of the contest is on WPF, but the judging criteria includes performance and code quality, etc. I am still waiting on my reg code so I haven’t seen the amount of data to be used yet, but if we think that performance can be improved by dropping it into SQL Server to do some of the crunching, or build a small web service, should we go ahead and do that (as opposed to loading the data directly into memory and using it that way)? Will we be adding to much complexity for the judges? Just want to make sure I get the constraints right. Thank you…I look forward to competing.
Cy - Austin, TX
December 4th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
I’m with Karl. I’ve been waiting for about 30 minutes for my reg code.
December 5th, 2007 at 7:00 am
Hey, I’m from London and saw this competition and thought it looked great! However, I just noticed it’s not open to UK residents. What is that about?
December 5th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Neil,
See my answer a few posts up: http://blog.lab49.com/archives/1611#comment-96258
December 5th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
Daniel, I still have not received my reg emails. I tried the resend function today and have been sure to check spam folders. I can provide an alternate email, but would like to keep my registration tied to my hotmail account. Let me know what you think. Thank you.
December 6th, 2007 at 9:28 am
Cy, I personally emailed your reg code to your hotmail address, please let me know whether you get it or not.
December 6th, 2007 at 9:32 am
For those of you outside of North America who are disappointed that you\’re not eligible to win our contest, I thought I\’d pass this link along:
http://europe.ineta.org/Events/SilverlightEuropeanChallenge/tabid/311/Default.aspx
It\’s the European Silverlight Challenge, sponsored by INETA:
December 10th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Two questions regarding the contest:
1.) How do you define “first 25 submissions”? If an entrant submits something, revises it, and submits it again, which submission date is used?
2.) Are the visualizations constrained to depend only upon the provided sample data, or can we also collect user input (for example, hypothetical purchases)?
December 10th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Jacob,
1. Good question - I think we’ll update the site at some point to include a “this is my final submission” button.
2. Not at all, you can include whatever other data you want, to make a compelling demo.
Thanks & good luck - Daniel
December 10th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Thanks, Daniel.
Another question: the rules page states that the entrant retains intellectual property rights but releases rights to Lab49 to “distribute the solution”.
I assume “solution” in this context refers to the submitted source code? If so, what license will that be released under? Does the entrant have any input?
December 11th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Jacob:
Yes the solution means the submitted source code. I’ll get back to you on the specific language but essentially we will be preparing a showcase of the winning solutions where people can come see it, download it, etc.
December 13th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
OOPS! I get a server error when I try to go to the following links:
http://wpfcontest.lab49.com/login.aspx
http://wpfcontest.lab49.com/submit.aspx
These are the links for the first, second, and fourth steps to enter.
How can I get signed up?
Thanks, Earl
December 13th, 2007 at 11:54 pm
Earl - Sorry about that! I updated the site and must have missed a file. It’s fixed now and should be working fine. Let me know if you have any more problems.
December 14th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
I have tried several times over the last week or so but have yet to get any reg code email… is it working?!
December 19th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
Hi,
I would like to know whether I can use .NET3.5 as the platform?
December 20th, 2007 at 12:39 am
Festin: Yes you can.
December 26th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Hi,
I have a question with regard to the use of thirdparty components, for example, WPF charting tool.
December 26th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Long: As long as the judges can all compile and run it, you should be fine.
Assume they will have nothing but Visual Studio. We’ll do our best to download and install any third-party components if you provide directions/links. But no guarantees… if we can’t run it we’ll try to contact you for help but with so many applicants it may become impossible to do.
December 29th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Can a WPF Browser Application be entered in the contest? Thanks.
January 3rd, 2008 at 12:43 am
Hi Lab49, I have not had any success getting a reg code emailed to me… is it working? Thank you, Mark - Denver
January 3rd, 2008 at 9:19 am
Robert: Sure, I don’t see why not.
January 3rd, 2008 at 9:20 am
Mark: Emailed your code to you (looks like your spam filter might have blocked the reg emails).
January 10th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Hi, I am from the UK and would have liked to have entered - shame. Any chance of making the data available - it would be good to have a play!
January 11th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Andrew: Sure thing - I mailed you a copy of the data. Interested to see what you can come up with!
Regards - Daniel
January 14th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
how can I learn to program stuff like that so i can win?
January 14th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
e dog:
As it happens a few of our distinguished judges have written excellent WPF books, I encourage you to check them out:
EDITED: Links in comments were broken, moved to a separate post of their own here - http://blog.lab49.com/archives/1764
Hope this helps & good luck in the contest.
February 7th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
I know a few folks have asked here about applying from outside North America - I wanted to drop by and let you all know that as of today we’ve lifted that restriction.
So come on world, show us what you’re made of!
February 7th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
When I clicked on links about WPF, they all returned Error 404 not found.
February 7th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
June - thanks for the catch. For some reason the links in the comment were not working so I moved them to a post of their own, here http://blog.lab49.com/archives/1764
February 7th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Can my children 11 and 13 join forces with Dad to create their first program and enter your wpfcomp? I’m sure they won’t win, but it would be a buzz for them to think they could input something…and might encourage them into future programmers. Dad will just supervise and show them the tools they need, not design it for them. Oh we’re from Australia, I think your site said International applications are ok now.
blog us or email, thanks
February 27th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
I have a completed solution but the upload doesn’t seem to be working.
February 27th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Josh - what seems to be the problem?
February 28th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
What’s the “February 29, final submission” mean?
Which timezone? 00:00 or 24:00 at Feb 29?
I just found this contest and wanted to know long the deadline remains?
thanks
February 28th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
NOTE:
Contest deadline has been officially extended until March 10th.
That gives you plenty more time (including TWO extra weekends) to work on your entry before submitting it.
If you’ve already submitted something, don’t worry, you can use the extra time to improve your entry; you can keep submitting new versions right up until the deadline.
Don’t delay, get cracking! No excuses now…
February 28th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Also anyone having upload problems, feel free to email me your submission and I’ll make sure it gets counted.