Wrapping up the first GUI Olympics
Friday, March 29, 2002 by Frogboy | Discussion: GUI Championships News
The first GUI Olympics was a huge success. Far far more successful than we had ever imagined.
While we expected somewhere between 30 and 50 skins to be submitted, we ended up with nearly 140 skins.
Moreover, the quality of the skins was amazingly high.
We also learned a lot of lessons. No one had ever done anything quite like this before and we definitely have ideas on how to make the Summer GUI Olympics better.
Here are some conclusions we had:
1) Judges. Next time we will bring in 5 expert judges to judge the skins. Expertise on skinning the apps used will be the qualification.
2) Shorter time. Rather than have the event span over 2 months, we'll instead announce that it is coming and then have the actual event last only 3 weeks total with events bundled in groups rather than every X days.
3) More applications. For the first one, we picked WindowBlinds visual styles. The reason was simple, we could find a sponser easily (us) and it is the most popular purely customization program. For the next one we'll have icons, a skinnable MP3 player, and something else. We haven't decided yet.
4) More submission controls. Once a skin is uploaded, it's up there, we'll allow ONE update.
5) Real medals. We'd like to have an "overall" medal winner for each general category. So for instance, the overall winner in the WindowBlinds visual styles events seems to be Grayhaze followed by Hippy and then Treetog (on points). So they would literally receive a gold, silver, and bronze medal at the end. We don't have anything quite like that prepared here but then again, the summer GUI Olympics probably won't have nearly as much cash involved..
It's been great fun seeing not just all the skin authors creating some of the best, most creative, and just plain cool skins ever made, but seeing all of the various customization sites working together.
And the participation has been incredible. LotsOfSkins, DeviantART, SkinBase, TweakXP, Customize.org, VeleocityCART, Lockergnome, Betanews, Deskmod, and Neowin all put together teams of skin authors who have competed.
Not every site won a medal -- I don't think anyone would have imagined scenarios where a single skin site (such as LotOfSkins) would have more submissions than we had projected would be made in total for the contest -- but every site came out looking pretty good.
Thank you to all who have participated and congratulations to all the winners thus far. You all should pat yourselves on the back. You did great!
On Tuesday we are going to announce 5 additional awards (not medals, but something different - use the ending of the GUI Olympics to honor some skin authors).
While we expected somewhere between 30 and 50 skins to be submitted, we ended up with nearly 140 skins.
Moreover, the quality of the skins was amazingly high.
We also learned a lot of lessons. No one had ever done anything quite like this before and we definitely have ideas on how to make the Summer GUI Olympics better.
Here are some conclusions we had:
1) Judges. Next time we will bring in 5 expert judges to judge the skins. Expertise on skinning the apps used will be the qualification.
2) Shorter time. Rather than have the event span over 2 months, we'll instead announce that it is coming and then have the actual event last only 3 weeks total with events bundled in groups rather than every X days.
3) More applications. For the first one, we picked WindowBlinds visual styles. The reason was simple, we could find a sponser easily (us) and it is the most popular purely customization program. For the next one we'll have icons, a skinnable MP3 player, and something else. We haven't decided yet.
4) More submission controls. Once a skin is uploaded, it's up there, we'll allow ONE update.
5) Real medals. We'd like to have an "overall" medal winner for each general category. So for instance, the overall winner in the WindowBlinds visual styles events seems to be Grayhaze followed by Hippy and then Treetog (on points). So they would literally receive a gold, silver, and bronze medal at the end. We don't have anything quite like that prepared here but then again, the summer GUI Olympics probably won't have nearly as much cash involved.
It's been great fun seeing not just all the skin authors creating some of the best, most creative, and just plain cool skins ever made, but seeing all of the various customization sites working together.
And the participation has been incredible. LotsOfSkins, DeviantART, SkinBase, TweakXP, Customize.org, VeleocityCART, Lockergnome, Betanews, Deskmod, and Neowin all put together teams of skin authors who have competed.
Not every site won a medal -- I don't think anyone would have imagined scenarios where a single skin site (such as LotOfSkins) would have more submissions than we had projected would be made in total for the contest -- but every site came out looking pretty good.
Thank you to all who have participated and congratulations to all the winners thus far. You all should pat yourselves on the back. You did great!
On Tuesday we are going to announce 5 additional awards (not medals, but something different - use the ending of the GUI Olympics to honor some skin authors).
grayhaze
Reply #2 Friday, March 29, 2002 9:37 PM
Reply #2 Friday, March 29, 2002 9:37 PM
Real gold? I like the idea of that... 
Well done to everyone involved. I'll be back for more in the Summer...
Well done to everyone involved. I'll be back for more in the Summer...
DavidK
Reply #3 Friday, March 29, 2002 9:38 PM
Reply #3 Friday, March 29, 2002 9:38 PM
Great concept! The participation shows how much an idea like this can be accepted, and enjoyed, by the whole skinning world. This was great fun, there should be many more. Thanks to all who made the idea a reality and thanks to all who made such great skins that we all get to use and enjoy. Congrats to the winners! Too bad there weren't a hundred more medals... 
MarkMcQ
Reply #4 Saturday, March 30, 2002 6:50 AM
Reply #4 Saturday, March 30, 2002 6:50 AM
Yeah, this was pretty fun indeed.
Now, post-Glimpics party time: Back to mines for beer.
Attila
Reply #5 Sunday, March 31, 2002 11:18 AM
Reply #5 Sunday, March 31, 2002 11:18 AM
Hippy, as long as your not serving Fosters.. I'll be there. 
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Reply #1 Friday, March 29, 2002 6:10 PM