Design your t-shirt launcher now!
Believe it or not, planning for next years JavaOne is already
underway. A huge amount of effort goes into putting together such a
large event. At the last JavaOne we held a t-shirt launching
contest, and it worked out very well. Everyone had a lot of fun.
The finalist teams had a great time building their contraptions,
and the audience had a great time being their victims. So we're
going to do it again this year, with the same basic principles:
- Deliver t-shirts to the audience in an "interesting"
manner
- Have Fun
- Don't freak out the Fire Marshal
We havn't worked out the exact timing, but it looks like we'll
be running the contest in about the same sequence this year:
- Prospective competitors (that's you) write up a 2 or 3 page
proposal about how you intend to get the t-shirts out into the
audience. You need to cover why you think you'll manage to not
kill anyone (also known as the "safety plan"), and you'll need to
cover why you think it will work (also known as the "I don't need
to violate any laws of physics" plan). A lot of last years
submissions showed a rather shakey grasp of the laws of physics.
For example, there were several submissions last year that
involved balloons that didn't seem to understand that when a
balloon drops a weight, the balloon becomes lighter and goes
up.
- Send it in for judging
- Three finalists will be picked who get to build their gizmo
and use it live, on stage, at JavaOne.
So get thinking, get creative, and most important: get wierd.
