The 2008 Winter Scripting Games
User Group Challenge
The 2008 Winter Scripting Games User Group Challenge
Are you a member of a user group? In that case, read on: the Scripting Guys and TechNet Magazine have got a deal for you.
As part of the 2008 Winter Scripting Games, the Scripting Guys and TechNet Magazine are teaming up to sponsor the User Group Challenge. What’s the User Group Challenge? Well, we’re looking for the user group that has the most members, on a proportional basis, entered in the 2008 Winter Scripting Games. In other words, suppose two users groups (User Group A and User Group B) take part in the Challenge. User Group A has 20 members, and 6 of them (30 percent) enter the Scripting Games; User Group B has 100 members and 27 of them (27 percent) enter the Scripting Games. Who wins the 2008 Winter Scripting Games User Group Challenge? You got it: User Group A, 30 percent to 27 percent.
We see you have a question, and it’s a good one: what is in it for you? Well, for starters, we’ll award the winning user group a trophy, and feature the group and its activities in a Script Center article. In addition, we’ll present an individual award to each member of the group who actually participates in a Scripting Games event. (What do we mean by “an individual award?” To be honest, we don’t know yet; that depends on how many of those awards we have to give out.)
At any rate, we thought this might be a fun activity for user groups to participate in. (Can you work together as a group to come up with solutions for each event? Of course you can; after all, that’s what user groups are for, right?) Best of all, you don’t have to do anything special to register your group for the challenge. Instead, each time you enter an event just be sure and indicate the user group that you belong to. For example, if you belong to the Edmonton Microsoft User Group, each event entry should start with a header that includes your Scripting Games “nickname,” the country you’re representing, and – last but surely not least – the user group you belong to:
Ken Myer United Kingdom Edmonton Microsoft User Group
That’s all you have to do; the Scripting Guys will take it upon themselves to keep track of the number of participants, and will use statistics supplied by Culminis to determine the number of users in your user group.
Note You say that your user group isn’t registered with Culminis? That’s OK; we’ll work with your group individually to determine the total number of members. |
Scoring will be a little easier if you enter the group name according to the “official” Culminis user group list. You can either choose from the lists online or use the Scripting Games Entry Form included in the 2008 Scripting Games Competitor’s Pack to submit your entry.
By the way, if you decide to get together as a group and tackle the Scripting Games events we can send you the event instructions in Microsoft Word format if you prefer; just send an email to scripter@microsoft.com and we’ll send all the information to you on the morning of Friday, February 15th, the opening day of the Games. Oh, and keep in mind that if you do decide to enter as a group each member taking part in the Games must submit a separate entry. You can’t just send a single script and say that, “This script was written by Bob, Carol, Ted, and Alice.” (Well, we suppose that you can do that. However, you’ll get credit for only 1 entry.) Instead, Bob, Carol, Ted, and Alice should all submit separate entries, even if those entries are all identical.
Besides, that’s the only way that Bob, Carol, Ted, and Alice will all be eligible for the great individual prizes being awarded during the Games.
Good luck, and we hope to see a whole bunch of user groups – and their members – come February 15th. If you have questions about the Games, or about the User Group Challenge, just email scripter@microsoft.com.
