Introduction

Microsoft along with partners and customers and in association with TopCoder will run a series of Connected Services Framework (CSF) Mashup Service Design and Development competitions where developers from partners of all types (NEP, ISV, SI, OEM), as well as freelance developers can collaborate and compete to generate new mashup service designs and then build functional prototypes of those designs.

By leveraging The Connected Services Sandbox, the sponsors as well as the contestants will gain access to global software development ecosystem that is driven by quality allowing the ecosystem to propel development of new innovative mashups.

The partners are in a unique opportunity to take advantage of this creative “no-shore” pool of creative talent to deliver innovative ideas and working prototypes of ideas that can be easily commercialized for a larger subscriber base and drive higher customer value and revenue from new service innovation. Microsoft additionally expects that the prototypes resulting from these competitions will inspire broad innovation in the Web 2.0 realm which can easily be monetized.

Series Goals & Objectives

• Develop new mashup services through competition
• Promote and sustain a community of talent around the Connected Services Framework
• Engage customers by providing them access to a process that yields results and reduce the time from concept to market
• Get the sandbox partners close to each other and this community of CSF skills.

Competition Structure and Format

The competitions will be divided into multiple scenarios (user stories), each having two stages:

Creative Mashup Design Competitions: The creative mashup design competitions are the first stage of the contests consisting of creative a storyboard around an innovative mashup idea. The output will be a series of written (specification, process diagram, flow chart) or graphical representation (story board) of a solution that would satisfy a given scenario. The scope and rules for the competitions will be defined by the sponsoring partner.

The Assembly Competitions: Assembly is the second stage and requires that the Mashup design be built into a prototype that delivers a demonstrable service based upon the winning design from the first stage of the competition. The CSF service development competitions are not intended to produce commercial, enterprise-grade software, but a working prototype or proof of concept services.

Scoring the Competition:

At the end of each stage of the competition, the submissions will be reviewed by a panel of Microsoft customers, Microsoft engineers and peers from the community. The judging criteria will be defined by the competition sponsor. Winners will be identified, announced and rewarded through both monetary and non-monetary promotional programs.