Now that the dust has settled, let me write a few words about the results of the Make yourself known contest.
Let me break the bad news first: I didn’t win. Not that I expected that (though I had a faint hope), but I have to say that I’m just a little bit disappointed. Here’s why. There was just short of 300 contestants at the beginning; it turned out that only 70 of them lasted to the end. I was one of them, so I may officially call myself a “finalist” (though “semifinals” would probably fit better). Out of these 70 people, sixteen were chosen for the finals – and here’s where my (slight) disappointment comes from: I was not one of them.
But there are plenty of good news. One of them is that my friend ended up third. Nice, and congratulations! (Of course, my congratulations go to other winners, too!) Other than that, I learned quite a lot, and gained some confidence. I did put the Logeox project aside for now, since I have an awful lot of other work, but it is possible that I’ll come back to it some day.
Also, I think it is interesting to ponder a bit about the reasons I didn’t win. Not because I feel a strong pressure to win next time (if there’s next time, and I hope so), but because I think there’s a lesson to be learned here. Since the contest was (at least partially) a popularity contest, I guess my mistake was that I didn’t participate more in the community. As I mentioned before, I think it’s a shame, and I do regret it – not only because it probably decreased my chances to win (and they were not that impressive to start with anyway), but because it is definitely a lost opportunity. So, here’s my plan regarding the contest now: I’d like to revisit at least some of the blogs, learn from them, leave some comments and maybe meet interesting people (if only virtually).
Once again, congratulations to the winners, and thanks for the great event!