mcu_nerdI was at first happy that the annual HaD Prize started up again. This year I put in two entries. If anything else, I would get a few $ of seed money to go towards buying supplies to work on my latest projects, or so I thought. Upon reading the rules for this year’s HaD Prize (and also getting it confirmed by a staff member) I learned that only projects that make into the top 20 in the first round will receive any seed money, a bit of a letdown to say the least.
One of the most appealing (if not the most appealing) things about the HaD Prize vs many other contests was that even if you didn’t win any prizes, you could often get some seed money at the very least. It’s why I’ve bothered to put in entries for the HaD Prize. I know I wasn’t likely to win anything big but I’d at least get some money to fund my projects. If this ends up being the norm for future iterations of the HaD prize, then there’s practically little incentive for me and many others to enter.
This year's focus to design a product for mass production does seem out of place. Most projects here aren't things that the general public care going to want to buy off of store shelves, so it's doesn't make sense to design to spit out thousands. For my hardware designs I’m more focused on the design to be easy to assemble by hand and keeping costs down.
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I definitely see a tendency for a more "winner takes all" approach. And I'm afraid this attracts people who don't really participate in the hackaday community, that focus on working to win the prize, and that disappear from hackaday as soon as the contest ends.
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Right, looks like they want to make money this time. The rules allows Supply Frame to use the contest entries for whatever they want ("perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, adapt, modify, publish, distribute, publicly perform, create a derivative work from, and publicly display, in any and all media"). The prize money is peanuts for them if someone invents the next big thing. But of course would be still nice to get the money.
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I think what they mean is not the project idea itself but the images/videos/scripts. So this would help the project owner to gain more publicity. However, they want to make sure they can easily make ads based on what is provided. Without this section, they would need your approval for everything they want to do. For instance if you have your logo on your project parts, in normal situation they need to ask your permission but with this section in place they can just use your media files.
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Correct, that section is always there to support published videos and other materials about the prize.
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Same feeling here.
I understand that the sponsors are interested by a certain type/structure of projects... entrepreneurship, yadayada, but here we're tinkerers and we also do "basic research". We understand that going the commercial route takes us away from our love and brainchilds, and often into the realm of financial stress. But it's less sexy for the sponsors, who give all that crazy money...
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