The FTW! Coding Competition

“FTW” has been known to stand for many things, but in the case of the FTW! Coding Competition, it means “For The Web” (as well as “For The Win”). The FTW Coding Competition is part of our Make Web Not War event taking place on Thursday, May 27th in Montreal.

What is the FTW! Coding Competition?

The FTW! Coding Competition is your chance to show off your web development skills and compete for some great prizes. We’re looking for people to either:

• Write a new web application or
• Port an existing web application

as long as it falls under one of these categories:

• PHP application running on Internet Information Server (that’s our web server) and Windows Server (that’s our server OS)
• Windows Azure (that’s our cloud computing environment) application, written in any language that works on it (C#, Visual Basic .NET, PHP, Ruby and Python)
• Open Government application (using any of the Open Data catalogues on Windows Server or Windows Azure, using any programming language)

What Can I Win?

The prizes for the FTW! Coding Competition are:

First Place: The Dell Office Computer Makeover

I’m tempted to take this off the prize list and keep it for myself. It’s made up of all these goodies:

• Dell Precision Workstation 15” notebook computer
• Notebook stand and port replicator
• 27” widescreen LCD monitor
• Wireless keyboard and mouse
• Ferguson Hill FH007 sound system

Second Place: The Home/Office System

A nice package for bouncing between home and the office.

• Dell Precision Workstation 14” notebook computer
• Ferguson Hill FH007 sound system

Third Place: The Road Warrior

A very portable and powerful system for the coder on the go. This one’s for all you “cafe coders”!

• Dell Adamo XPS 13 notebook computer

Bonus Prizes

We’re awarding bonus prizes for submitted apps that we feel worthy of the following superlatives. You can win these on their own or in combination with the first, second and third place prizes!

• Best Azure Application:
  • Ultraportable Dell Vostro V13 notebook computer
  • Dell M109S portable DLP projector
• Best PHP Application:
  • Dell Studio One 19” all-in-one computer
• Best Open Government Application:
  • Dell Studio Hybrid ultra-compact desktop computer
• Best Application Using Microsoft SQL Server:
  • Sharp 32” LCD TV
  • Blu-Ray disc player
• Best Student Application:
  • Xbox 360 Elite
  • 6 Xbox 360 games
  • 2 Xbox 360 controllers
  • 22” LCD TV
  • Logitech X-540 surround speaker system

What’s the Deadline?

In order to be eligible, you have to submit your web application by Monday, May 10th, 2010 at 8:00 a.m. Eastern. So get working!

Where Can I Find Out More about the FTW! Coding Competition?

You can find out more about the FTW! Coding Competition, including all the terms and conditions of the competition, at the FTW! Coding Competition site.

[This article also appears in Global Nerdy.]