Wrapping up the first GUI Olympics
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Stardock Forums
Stardock Forums
The first GUI Olympics was a huge success. Far far more successful than we had ever imagined.
While we expected somewhere between 30 and 50 skins to be submitted, we ended up with nearly 140 skins.
Moreover, the quality of the skins was amazingly high.
We also learned a lot of lessons. No one had ever done anything quite like this before and we definitely have ideas on how to make the Summer GUI Olympics better.
Here are some conclusions we had:
1) Judges. Next time we will bring in 5 expert judges to judge the skins. Expertise on skinning the apps used will be the qualification.
2) Shorter time. Rather than have the event span over 2 months, we'll instead announce that it is coming and then have the actual event last only 3 weeks total with events bundled in groups rather than every X days.
3) More applications. For the first one, we picked WindowBlinds visual styles. The reason was simple, we could find a sponser easily (us) and it is the most popular purely customization program. For the next one we'll have icons, a skinnable MP3 player, and something else. We haven't decided yet.
4) More submission controls. Once a skin is uploaded, it's up there, we'll allow ONE update.
5) Real medals. We'd like to have an "overall" medal winner for each general category. So for instance, the overall winner in the WindowBlinds visual styles events seems to be Grayhaze followed by Hippy and then Treetog (on points). So they would literally receive a gold, silver, and bronze medal at the end. We don't have anything quite like that prepared here but then again, the summer GUI Olympics probably won't have nearly as much cash involved.
While we expected somewhere between 30 and 50 skins to be submitted, we ended up with nearly 140 skins.
Moreover, the quality of the skins was amazingly high.
We also learned a lot of lessons. No one had ever done anything quite like this before and we definitely have ideas on how to make the Summer GUI Olympics better.
Here are some conclusions we had:
1) Judges. Next time we will bring in 5 expert judges to judge the skins. Expertise on skinning the apps used will be the qualification.
2) Shorter time. Rather than have the event span over 2 months, we'll instead announce that it is coming and then have the actual event last only 3 weeks total with events bundled in groups rather than every X days.
3) More applications. For the first one, we picked WindowBlinds visual styles. The reason was simple, we could find a sponser easily (us) and it is the most popular purely customization program. For the next one we'll have icons, a skinnable MP3 player, and something else. We haven't decided yet.
4) More submission controls. Once a skin is uploaded, it's up there, we'll allow ONE update.
5) Real medals. We'd like to have an "overall" medal winner for each general category. So for instance, the overall winner in the WindowBlinds visual styles events seems to be Grayhaze followed by Hippy and then Treetog (on points). So they would literally receive a gold, silver, and bronze medal at the end. We don't have anything quite like that prepared here but then again, the summer GUI Olympics probably won't have nearly as much cash involved.
WinCustomize Forums
Well done to everyone involved. I'll be back for more in the Summer...
