Hi, now that the official have announced the recipients of this years HaMakor Prize and I am one of them let me relate to it:
I think the major reason HaMakor gives the prize is to say thank to the contributors to Open Source and Free software movement. I am happy that I was one of the recipients though I know there are many others who would deserve to get the prize long before I get, especially in the category of writing code. Really, which one of you have ever looked at my code ? With that said I think giving out the prizes should be used as an opportunity to point out an example to the members of the community and to the outside world. It should also be used as a PR tool for HaMakor. I think the prizes could and should be an opportunity for HaMakor to do some PR work. The announcement of the winners was made on August Penguin, where I was not present (I was on a Perl conference in Lisbon and teaching Perl 6 with Larry Wall in the classroom, sorry ;-) but since then AFAIK the first public announcement of the prize was yesterday on this list. Maybe I missed other announcements, if so please send me the links, but I think there were none. Not even on http://hamakor.org.il/ (I see it is there now) nor on http://www.whatsup.org.il/ and definitely not on the more mainstream publications. Maybe the PR work was postponed to the time when the actual presents arrive and we will see the activity now. If that was the plan, good. I'll shut up. On the other hand if there were no such plans then, please consider using this opportunity to talk to journalists and make some noise. Write an announcement - longer than the one sent out to the list - one that includes the explanation why have we received the prize and what is the price about. (copy paste from the wiki if needed) but don't make the journalists collect this information for him/herself. They won't. Please write one in Hebrew and one in English too. I don't know about the others but if there was a nice logo of the prize, I'd be happy to put it on my website and link it to a static page (and not a wiki entry!) that explains about the prize, gives a list of past recipients etc. Gabor ps. Again, thanks for everyone who thought I am worthy for the prize. ps.2 Yes, I'd like to brag about getting the prize! _______________________________________________ Discussions mailing list Discussions@hamakor.org.il http://hamakor.org.il/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discussions
