Financial Agile's First Essay Competition

Written by Jamie Thursday, 21 July 2011 15:58

Financial Agile, with the kind support of its sponsor, Ugly Duckling, are running their first ever essay writing competition. It is our aim to help promote, and reward, technical writing. In the agile community we speak of quality in everything we do, yet we are so busy building great teams and great software that our writing suffers!

We are looking for participants to enter an essay of 2,000 words, give or take 200 words. The subject can be anything to do with financial or software engineering. We will accept technical entries that include source code; we will accept philosophical entries that deal with technique or engineering’s place in society. We will accept critiques, too. We care only about the quality of the writing.

Participants, in return, can win the following:

The third placed entrant will win €150 to spend on Amazon.
The second place entrant will win an iPad.
The first place entrant will win two days of consulting from one of Ugly Duckling’s rather well qualified staff. (uD said if the winner doesn’t want a two-day consult, they can have an iPad, too.)

All essays will be published here, and so the real prize is glory and bragging rights.

All the entrant has to do is send the essay to: essaycompetition@financialagile.com. The essay must be original and must not have been published anywhere else. Entrants can build on previous works but must not plagiarise their own work or anybody else's.

All entrants must be in before Friday the 9th of September, 2011. The winner will be announced the following week.

Financial Agile wishes you all the best and looks forward to helping the next generation of software writers to develop.

Best wishes, Jamie and Jorrit.

Please don't forget to click on Ugly Duckling's link, as we'd like them to give us more money next year.