hey @mateseng it is the best fun to build and enter!

Even if I by some strange reason would be accepted as a judge (I'm sure I don't have the qualifications) I'm not convinced that I'd want to be a judge.  It's far to fun to build something and enter ;-)

But thinking about it a bit more - the designing and building is the fun part, entering into a competition is not a driving factor for me.   

Well, maybe it is anyways since it pushes me to finalize something instead of jumping to the next thing mid-build.  If I hadn't entered into the last RetroChallenge I for sure hadn't finished that project.

I think that's a pretty common story -- people have fun stuff already on their list of "some day" projects and if the contest comes along they figure "why not?".

Yep absolutely true, so keep the contest coming at a regular pace.  

Personally I'd rather drop the yearly big Hackaday prize and distribute the total prize amount to 10-15 smaller contests spread out over the year with reasonable prizes to win.  Tindie vouchers ranging from $1000 and downwards is just as good as cash for me.

But I do understand that a $500K or a "Trip to space" gives better marketing opportunities for HAD/Supplyframe so it's here to stay.