Computerworld

Visual Studio contest launched

Winners to be announced at Tech Ed in August

Calling all Visual Studio gurus: Microsoft is holding a contest for developers involving Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio Team System.

The winners will be announced at the Tech Ed conference in August and the competition, being held for the first time in New Zealand, consists of three categories: First, individual developers developing an application in .Net 2.0 using Visual Studio 2005 Team System; second, development teams making Visual Studio 2005 Team System part of the development process; and third, a category called "I'm creative, I think outside the square."

The latter is for those who "can bend our rules a little bit and perhaps teach us a thing or two", says Microsoft developer and platform group director Sean McBreen. "We will reward for an interesting idea that we did not think of."

The idea of the contest is to encourage those who are beta testing the Visual Studio products and anyone who is keen to work with a beta copy to explore them, McBreen says.

Any intellectual property developed by contestants will be owned by Microsoft and the source code will be distributed "for others to learn from", according to the contest terms and conditions. However, if entrants would rather their code wasn't distributed, it won't be, says McBreen.

McBreen says the issue of intellectual property would only arise from the individual or "I'm creative, I think outside the square" categories, as no source code is required in the team section.

Prizes totalling $100,000 worth of Microsoft product — in the form of Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio Team System software — are on offer.