Concord Award (hacking scene award)
Last November, a panel of twelve (three admin staff members each from GSHI, KodeWerx, CodeMasters-Project, and Hacking101) established the Concord Award, a collaborative, scene-wide award given to a single person, for overall contribution to the scene (whether that contribution is in the form of hacking codes, creating hacking tools, building hacking communities, teaching new hackers the trade, or anything else that's worthy). The winner of the 2008 Concord Award was Kenobi, with a landslide vote of 7-3 (obviously, two members did not vote). As a collaboration between admin staff of the four primary sites in the hacking scene, it was a relative success. It also established a standardized, open source of communication between the four sites, which in itself was at least a minimal achievement.
However, it was more of a dry run than the 'real thing', and only sporadic, tentative, and hurried thought went into it. There was no established prize for the award, and the Q & A that was planned to take place between the winner and a chosen delegate never happened. Hacking 101 fell upon ill times and disappeared shortly thereafter, and, as always, the staff members of the remaining three sites had their own endeavors to deal with.
Rather than continue the trend, dealing with the Concord Award when the time comes, having a quick vote between a select (and now 25% smaller) group of delegates, and ideas and input only coming from those few, it would be optimal to set the stage for Concord in advance, to establish guidelines and an infrastructure, and to open it up to a public vote.
Now we need input from everyone as to how to go about such an award.
For a general layout of the Concord Award, drop by http://ConcordAward.org (however, keep in mind that some content is still geared toward the old system, and will be revised). Specifically, some tentative rules can be found here: http://concordaward.org/index.php/Panel_Rules
A couple of things that will need to be decided on:
- How will the vote take place? Should it be a forum thread-vote, or something more advanced? As we must require authentication of some kind to avoid abuse of the voting system, what kind of authentication is prudent, and what type of voting system would facilitate this? Moreover, how will we, if we do at all, determine if users are double-voting, by creating new accounts with false names? Shall we require that voters are approved somehow?
- What should the prize for the award be? An inscribed plaque with a trophy might be a good idea, and would at least be something unseen in the hacking scene, but there are plenty of other potential prizes, and perhaps more than one prize could be awarded (a monetary, and a sentimental, perhaps).
...and I'm sure there are a few other considerations. Let us know your thoughts.
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