contests Archives

Developers Love Competition

Developers love competition. Why? Based on my experience, they enjoy showing off their skills and they enjoy the intellectual challenge. And, of course, some of them just plain love to compete. But it's not just my opinion. We recently completed a Developer Media study about personality types. I'll share the results with you later, but the short version is that 70% of developers fit into 5 personality types. To further drill down, we found that 52% of developers have "NT" personality traits vs. 14% of the regular US population. What's NT? Well, we used the Myers-Briggs Personality Index (MBTI) (R), [...]

Making Developer Contests Count

Nothing incentivizes developer engagement better than developer contests. Implicit in the developer contest is the requirement for engagement via participation. By collecting data about who participates in each contest, you get more than a mailing list—you immediately gain valuable insight about your audience. What rewards attract them? Who tends to participate in contests? This is valuable customer insight! Even better, properly structured, your contest is sure to generate developer buzz, influencer content and new applications built on your platform. Remember that a contest is essentially a digital event. While digital events have lower cost per headcount than in person [...]