Martin…
Are you referring to this particular EI forum or to the CG Society contest rules as a whole? I tend to agree with the CGSociety. You can’t hold a contest or competition unless its open and available to everyone. I also agree with sponsorship rules too. Unless you’re a paying advertiser, its unfair to benefit on all the exposure your product gets from said competition when every other sponsor is paying to participate. Society competitions must also be highly planned and formally presented.
Project Phoenix, our last competition, was for EI users only. The only way I could do that was to offer a personal prize package myself. I conducted it entirely by myself and with the Society’s permission provided it didn’t give away software or 3D products from a specific vendor. We had a lot of visitors to this forum during the competition, but I agree that more exposure would happen if the contest wasn’t closed. (up to a point) Hence the reason for my starting this thread. I’m attempting to find out if we should try for another private competition, or if I should attempt to arrange something bigger. If we go the route of something bigger, it means more coordination with the Society and if EITG wants to be a potential sponsor of the event, they’ll have to start advertising here. Plus, EITG most likely wont be the only 3D program contributing to the prize package. Attempting to do so would show favoritism to one specific application.
Essentially, the bigger the competition gets, the more likely some other software vendor will “trump” EITG’s prize with something better. Wouldn’t be hard given EITG’s limited resources. The other thing to realize is the Society wont allow for an open competition to be sponsored by a sole vendor. Again, favoritism. If EITG were to contribute the “grand” prize, I’m sure it would have to be a doozy.
We could do another Project Phoenix style competition if its organized and “sponsored” by individual CGSociety members rather than the vendors. We could probably offer a rather nice prize package if individuals were willing to “donate” to the cause. Obviously there can’t be a fee to the competition because then that violates the rules of the Society as well. The system Ballastic Media has arranged in their formal competitions is quite elegant. Entrance to the competitions are basically free. Vendors get exposure thanks to the large draw these competitions produce, and Ballastic obtains rights to publish results in their Expose art books, which they turn around and sell to help fund their company and the Society. I think its brilliant.
If we wanted it to be open to all software packages it would basically have to be like this: “Compete in the XYZ competition, brought to you by the members of the EIAS forum”. But even that gets tricky. The prize would have to be defined in advance, it couldn’t be vendor specific, and any “donations” towards the prize would have to be anonymous and only applied towards the predefined prize package. It must be members helping members essentially. But even with that, this could potentially expand way beyond the little Project Phoenix competition and some discussions with the Society would have to be made if somehow we produced a prize more substantial than a leather jacket and an iPod.
As far as a starting time frame for a competition, it would probably be a little while…depending on the level of complexity we want to take it.
