How To Evangelise Clarion (2), The Walk-Off

Part 1 was the previous post about taking a video camera onto university grounds.

Remember in Zoolander (if you don’t find movies about totally vain male models, cameos, billy zane saying "It’s a Walk-Off" to anyone and noone, listening to JitterBug while models are having a gasoline fight at a petrol station .. funny, then you’ve probably never watched or liked Zoolander) when Billy Zane says, "It’s a Walk-Off".

Well, what I’m proposing as a particularly effective way of evangelising Clarion is to have our own Walk-Offs, or as they will be known from here out, Code-Offs.

Instead of prancing about on a catwalk, attempting to pull our undies clean off, we start with having timed competitions, where we have a particular goal, we limit ourselves, we get a finished product, and possibly someone judges it.

(I’m going to get to the two different paths we will take with these in a second)

For example, it is decided that the object of the current Code-Off is to create a system that effectively solves a certain business model within a period of say, 4 hours (keeping it short, especially at the start, is a good way of maintaining enthusiasm).

After the 4 hours, contestants submit their projects, and after a period of judging, the winners are announced.

You might not even have winners, just comments on each project. But definately have some kind of competition.

Of course, this particular example is internal. Just amongst the Clarion Community. It will be used to raise the profile of Clarion in the outside world, but it’s main effect will be to bind the current community together (well, hopefully together, you’d have to be careful with the judging and the competing and the egos and all that).

The second path is an external Code-Off.

This is where it really gets interesting. You’d contact various communities, talk to them about holding a (it might be a little longer, say 24 hours) Code-Off between various development tools. Each community would submit a judge, and each community would submit a (maybe set) number of contestants.

The competition would begin as soon as the Object (the subject, the thing that we are doing) is announced. 24 hours later, all projects would be submitted, and the judges would go to work.

This would be a HUGE opportunity to evangelise Clarion. It wouldn’t even matter if we didn’t do that well. Although i’m confident that we could, given the right people, blow everyone away.

Actually, this would work really well in teams. Like they do with gaming. The Aussie Quake 3 team, that sort of thing.

Just imagine some of the team combinations we could have. Ha ha. Nice.

Anyway, that’s my next idea for how to evanglise Clarion. As waffly as the post is, there’s still a lot more that could be fleshed out, but I’ll leave it to you guys to see if it excites you enough to comment your own ideas on the matter.

The School / University Question

I’m sure many people will have thought through this question before.

I believe that part of the future success of Clarion will come from establishing a presence within the schools and universities/colleges/tafes etc.

Again, there would be a lot of people who have thought this in the past, and may have tried to make it happen.

I have a simple idea to start the ball rolling.

Grab a video camera, and possibly a camera-man (or just use yourself and question asker and camera man), and travel to the institutions around. This only really works in unis and the like. Not sure of the privacy thing with schools.

You wander the grounds, probably locating yourself specifically near the computer science buildings, and start asking questions.

What questions are these?

Here’s one way I see it panning out.

Hi there. I’m conducting a software development survey.

We’re researching a particular product today.

It’s called Clarion.

Have you heard of Clarion?

And so on.

Of course, you’d have to do a choose your own adventure on the answers.

If Yes .. Pump fist with a Leyton "COME ON!!"

If No .. Ask the person to kindly put on a helmet that has "Indoctrinating Machine" sticky-taped to it’s front.

That kind of thing.

This will raise awareness of Clarion, especially if you do it with a little panache. Serious. But panache. Because we want people to ask the question ..

What Is The Clarion ..

Ahem.

I mean, "What Is Clarion?".

.. and we want them to find answers.