MVP Screencast Contest Status and Results

As you might recall, a little over two months ago Matt Hester and I announced a screencast contest.  Matt has the official contest announcement and official rules.  We limited the contest to the Microsoft MVP community for a couple of reasons.  We wanted to test the contest waters and make sure if we made any serious errors that we had a friendly audience.  There were other reasons, too.

Unfortunately we did not receive any contest submissions by the deadline last night.  I'm sure we'll get some feedback on why, but suffice it to say that the Lenovo ThinkPad T61p I configured and resealed is still gathering dust in my home office.  Now that's just wrong on soo many levels.  I mean you know how hard it is for me to look at that box knowing there's a laptop in that box that isn't going to be used this Christmas?  Blasphemy!!!

Funny thing, if you look at the contest official rules on what we wanted recorded, then compare that to the screencast post just above on installing open source software. You'll probably find some striking coincidences. Here's a portion of the contest description:

"This is a skill-based Contest. The object of this Contest is to create a video that will showcase the integration of PHP into IIS 7.0 on Windows Server 2008. The contestant will also have to install a PHP application of their choice (i.e. Wordpress) on the IIS server. Additionally the application will have to be demonstrated inside of Internet Explorer 7 or Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, and verified it is running inside of the IIS 7 environment."

So now that the contest is officially history, what shall we do next?  We'll likely still do another contest as planned.  I'll get with Matt soon and pick another idea.  It will most likely involve one of our products being demonstrated in a competitive setting.  And we'll likely open the contest to everyone in the United States this time. 

What can you do to prepare?  Pick a screencasting tool and get used to recording demos.  We'll let you know after the holidays what, when, where, etc. on the next round.  And don't count on it being as easy as this contest.  Happy holidays.