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« Last post by mouser on April 15, 2010, 12:17 AM »
i hear ya -- we knew this could be controversial, and it's not a commitment to do it like this every year, but after a LOT of discussion we thought it was worth trying for at least one year.
it really wasn't a "solution in search of a problem" but the result of a struggle to come to terms with where NANY fits in on DC.
we had long talks about it, but the main motivation is described in the bullet list that starts off Perry's explanation. Last year's NANY highlighted that these two kinds of NANY entries are in real conflict.
If NANY is a way to encourage everyone to code something for the experience of doing so, then it probably doesn't make sense to try to spread the word about the finished applications and encourage people new to DC to visit to try them -- because that's going to result in frustration when people discover the programs weren't really designed to be easy to use and serve a purpose necessarily. But then NANY loses the specialness it has to some coders in terms of helping them get an audience for something they worked really hard for. One idea was to have 2 different events.. but i didn't feel like we had the resources for that.
What we hope is that this new idea of NANY can solve this problem, by providing an open set of arms welcoming everyone who wants to create something to join in as always, and just "make something!" without worrying about it having to reach some level of quality or usefulness. While still telling those people who want a kick in the pants to really work their heart out for 3-6 months that we are ready to encourage, test, and help spread the word about a project that you really are going to work hard on.
And that this will also help us solve the problem of how to explain to outsiders which NANY programs may not really ready for them to use.
No doubt we will have to tweak and modify some of these ideas -- nothing is cast in stone, let's give it a try and see how it works?
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