Linden Lab Innovation Awards

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News: 2008 Call for Nominations

The hippo returns!

We are now accepting nominations for the second annual Linden Lab Innovation Awards. Also known as The Hippos, these awards honor community members who have had the most significant impact on the Second Life open source viewer project over the last year. Please help us acknowledge the work of your peers by nominating candidates in the categories listed in the "How It Works" section below.

Thanks to this community, the Second Life open source project has grown quite a bit this last year, with excellent contributions showing up not only in the issue tracker but also in documentation and community participation. Consider these highlights: Since this time last year, we have seen sldev list membership double and total patches accepted into the release viewer almost triple. Community members have joined in the Architecture Working Group effort to write open protocols for virtual worlds. Bug triages, office hours and team meetings have been well-attended, with invaluable guidance, technical assistance and organizational help coming from the community. You're all to be congratulated. On behalf of Linden Lab, I thank you for the thought and effort you have put toward the success of this project.

Read on and help us thank the superheros of our community!

Best, Liana

P.S. By the way, if you're not familiar with the hippo meme, The hippo has long been "the mascot" of Second Life. In the early days, Linden service announcements on the public forums would often feature the dramatic doings of super-powered yet secretive hippos who kept the grid safe from bugs released by evil gnomes. It seemed an appropriate icon for the open source project.

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HOW IT WORKS

Nominations

If you would like to nominate your open source peers for a Hippo Award, then please

• sign in to the Issue Tracker and add the person's Second Life avatar name as a subtask to the appropriate category (below), and
• write a comment about what their contribution was and why you find it to be exemplary. Please cite jira issues, wiki pages or other examples of the contribution wherever possible.

Nominations are open from 2008 June 25 through 2008 July 8 at noon PDT.

Additional notes:

• Although the issue tracker has a voting feature, winners will not be selected by popular vote but through the jury process described below.
• Please create only one jira issue per nominee per category. You are welcome to second a nomination by commenting on the jira opened in that nominee's name.
• People may be nominated in multiple applicable categories.

Eligibility

• Nominees are eligible to win if their contribution was made between 2007/07/01 and 2008/06/30.
• Linden Lab employees and family members are not eligible to win.

Judging

These are juried awards, and winners will be selected based on a point system used by the judges. The judges panel will be comprised of Linden open source team members and developers.

Categories

Nominees should exhibit not only a great track record in their respective categories but also exemplify core community values of collegiality and respect.

Visit the jira links below to read a description of the category and make nominations.

• Best Documentation MISC-1301
• Best Project Organizer MISC-1302
• Best Contribution MISC-1303
• The Jesse Malthus Award for Best Community Influence MISC-1304
• Contributor of the Year MISC-1305

We have redefined some of the categories from last year and added a new one in order to reduce overlap and increase coverage of the breadth of work coming from the community.

Awards

Award winners will be announced in early September. I'll be sending another message with the exact date, time and location of this event. You can see last year's award announcement on the blog.

Prizes

The 2007 Hippo Award winners received a rent-free parcel on the open source island Hippotropolis for one year and a gift of Linden dollars. The Contributor of the Year also received a Macintosh computer. Based on feedback from the 2007 winners, we'll be making some changes to the prize types and distribution this year, though the overall value of the prizes will be similar. A later announcement will detail this year's prizes.

About the Awards

The annual Linden Lab Innovation Awards, known as The Hippos, recognize excellence in developing the Second Life platform. The awards acknowledge outstanding work on the open source Second Life Viewer.

Why the Hippo?

The hippopotamus has long been a kind of unofficial mascot of Second Life. When the Viewer source code was first published in January 2007, the open source community quickly discovered the llhippo.cpp easter egg and claimed the humble hippo as it's own.

Links

Past Announcements

In August of 2007, Linden Lab announced the first Hippo Award honorees: Nicholaz Beresford, Alissa Sabre, Able Whitman, Gigs Taggart and Strife Onizuka.

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The LINDEN LAB INNOVATION AWARDS are for entertainment purposes only and have no monetary or other value. LINDEN LAB, LINDEN RESEARCH, and SECOND LIFE are trademarks or registered trademarks of Linden Research, Inc.

See Open Source Portal for more information about the pages here.