Community Innovation Program

Awards

Introduction

The Community Innovation Program Awards Committee is pleased to announce the winners of this year's contest. We were impressed by the quality of the submissions and by the work demonstrated, and on behalf of the OpenOffice.org Community, look forward to working with the Entrants.

There were four award levels, Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Honourable Mention. We heartily congratulate everyone who won! We have only named the team leaders here and regret that we were unable to fully name all the team members at the time of this announcement but in the coming week will strive to publish brief interviews and photos of the winners. We will also try to keep interest going in the work done. Finally, we hope that the successes demonstrated here by the contestants (and there were many) will excite other groups to participate in the next competition. The monetary reward is significant, but we believe that the real beneficiary is the Community: We all benefit from the work done in this program.

We describe the proces used below, and for each category state how much cash, in US dollars, each winner was awarded by Sun Microsystems, out of the USD $175,000 allotted OpenOffice.org. (The Committee adjusted the sums to be given so those in the Gold/Silver/Bronze categories won more money than otherwise stipulated.) A table listing winners is at http://development.openoffice.org/community_innovation_program_winners.html.

A full description of the rules can be found at http://development.openoffice.org/community_innovation_program.html

The Winners

(Links to all the projects will be added.)

Gold

Each will receive USD $13,750

• Per Eriksson, “QA Track 2.0.” Category: Tools
• Maximilian Odendahl, “Notes2.” Category: Technical, Core
• Daniel Naber and Marcin Miłkowski, “LanguageTool OpenOffice.org Integration and Community Website.” Category: Special
• László Németh, “Spell Checking.” Category: Technical, Core
• Regina Henschel, “Improve numerical stability of spreadsheet functions.” Category: Technical, Core
• Dominique Archambault (Team Leader), “odt2dtbook.” Category: Technical, Extensions

Silver

Each will receive USD $6,875.00

• Jean-Marie Gouarné, “The Perl OpenDocument Connector.” Category: Technical, Extensions
• Dmitri Popov, “Sun Report Builder User Guide.” Category: Documentation
• Bruno Cavaler Ghisi, “mOOo (Mobile OpenOffice.org).” Category: Special
• Gabriel Gurley, “Construction of Course Training Package for OpenOffice.org 3.” Category: Documentation
• Anthony Bryan “Metalink.” Category: Tools"
• Olivier Ronez, “The Dicollecte Project.” Category: Tools
• Jim White, “Groovy For OpenOffice.” Category: Technical, Extensions
• Helge Kraak, “Member Database.” Category: Special

Bronze

Each will receive USD 4,583.00

• Ihsan Faisal, “Indonesian Translation of Writer Guide.” Category: Documentation
• Holger Brandl, “OpenCards.” Category: Special
• Joshua Martin (Team Leader), “FLUX User Interface.” Category: Special
• Guillaume Maillard (Team Leader), “Java + Open Document = jOpenDocument.” Category: ODF
• Filip Molčan, “OOoPortal.com.” Category: Community
• Kálmán Szalai (KAMI), “Extensions of Extras.” Category: Technical, Extensions

Honourable Mention

• Dysmas de Lassus, “Swiss knife - On screen formating tool.” Category: Tools
• Alan C. Baird, “Screenwright(R) screenplay formatting template.” Category: Technical, Extensions
• Roland Mundloch, “myPWDs addon.” Category: Special
• Markus Schneider, “VN Thesis Template Tutorial / VN Thesis Template.” Category: Documentation*

These (one is not eligible for a cash award) will each receive USD $3,333.00
* Not eligible for cash award.

Discussion

The Program Committee followed the provisions of the Program Rules. We attended to the evaluations of the Project Leads and also looked to community participation and the ways in which the Entry benefited the OpenOffice.org Community. In allotting prize money, at our discretion we granted the Gold, Silver, Bronze winners more than was specified in the Rules, as the work done merited it.

There were six categories of interest.

• Technical: core code, extensions, ports
• Community: new methods of community cooperation, new marketing efforts, artwork, and other efforts that significantly further OpenOffice.org use and development, or the efficiency and effectiveness of the Community
• Tools: those that help the community build, distribute, work on OpenOffice.org, including infrastructure development, localization tools, as well as a working environment, management system, and other developer support
• OpenDocument Format (ODF): work that advances ODF development, OpenOffice.org's implementation, or makes the ODF more accessible through the ODF Toolkit project
• Documentation: both enduser and developer documentation and/or training materials; articles on OpenOffice.org for developers or endusers
• Special: a catch-all category to submit innovative Entries that significantly further OpenOffice.org, its applications and projects, and furthers the Community as a whole

Entrants were required to submit their work according to the category of their interest, and could only submit an entry to one category. Our judgment criteria were:

• Originality, which includes the nature of the problem addressed and the innovative nature of the Entry;
• The difficulty of the Entry, which includes the nature of the problem addressed and the difficulty in fashioning a solution;
• The current relevance of the Entry to the OpenOffice.org Community, and its completeness;
• The extent to which the Entry provides utility to the Community either by providing code that the Community uses and values or by fostering the Community's growth and development or; and
• Community participation by the Entrant in developing the Entry.

We congratulate the winners and firmly believe that this contest has strengthened the Community and extended its reach. We anticipate that in subsequent years, we will see yet more interesting and ambitious work.

- The Program Committee