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Meet the new stars in the Intel Software Network Hall of Fame!

By Gunjan Rawal (Intel) (11 posts) on November 18, 2008 at 2:45 am

In addition to the Black Belt, Brown Belt and Green Belt Software Developer titles, I am going be updating the Hall of Fame Page periodically with the objective of recognizing members of our communities who go above and beyond, help other members and strengthen our communities through their high-quality contributions.

Browse through the recently updated Hall of Fame page and learn more about who these members are, what technologies they are working on and see what makes them tick.

This time, meet:

Winners from the 2008 Game Demo Contest:

1. Tommy Refenes, First place winner of Best Threaded Game
2. Artem Y. Shabarin, First place winner for Best Game on the Go
3. Aaron Murray, winner of Best Game on Intel Graphics

Peter Trifonov, winner of the grand prize in our Intel Threading Challenge Contest!

Jugoslav Dujic and Dmitriy V'jukov, both active and very valued contributors on Intel® Software Network.

Also, in order to get to know the Intel Black Belt Software Developers a little better, I thought I’d do an email interview with both Jim and Igor. Thank you Jim and Igor for these interviews.

Lastly, if you’d like to recommend someone who should be featured on this page, I am all ears! Just drop me a note…

Categories: Academic, Cool Software, Financial Services Industry, Gaming, Intel® Software Network 2.0, Manageability, Mobility, Open Source, Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core, Software Engineering, Threading Building Blocks, Virtualization, Visual Computing, What If Software

Comments (2)

December 12, 2008 3:57 PM PST Ami Marowka Total Points: 30 Registered User

Recently, Intel announced the Intel Black Belt Software Developer award (http://software.intel.com/sites/blackbelt/ ), an attempt to copy the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award (http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/ ). The intention behind this program is positive – to recognize the contributions of members who regularly sharing their knowledge and expertise with their colleagues. However, this program leaves outside thousands of members that are contributing every day to Intel, and Intel user communities, only because they are not active in the virtual worlds of Intel e-communities. It seems that Intel did not prepare their homework before they lunched this new initiative. They could learn more from Microsoft program, for the good and bad. Microsoft MVP turns to "offline and online technical communities". "MVPs represent a broad spectrum of Microsoft product users. They occupy many different professions including accountants, teachers, artists, engineers and technologists. MVPs reside in over 90 countries, represent 30 different languages, and cover more than 90 Microsoft technologies". For example, there are many research groups in the Academia that present research papers in conferences and journals related to Intel products and technologies that could be awarded as black belt members. However, they usually do not have time to post articles and comments in Intel e-communities. If Intel wants, they can be reached easily. Intel also borrowed bad things from Microsoft MVP. Intel Green and Brown Belt Software Developer titles are valid for 12 months from the date of qualification. After one year the icon displayed on a developer profile is disappeared. The developer has to start again to work hard for getting back his title. Microsoft MVPs are allowed also to refer to themselves as Microsoft MVPs only for one year. However, many of them found ways to use their titles many years after they were awarded. That will happen with Intel Belts as well. I think that Intel should follow their source of inspiration - martial arts. Jūdōka are ranked according to skill and knowledge of judo for lifetime. Once an individual attains the level of a dan rank (black belt), further promotions can be granted for a variety of reasons including skill level, competition performance and/or contributions to judo such as teaching and volunteering time.Therefore, a higher dan rank does not necessarily mean that the holder is a better fighter. Ami Marowka (White belt, 5 points and counting…)

December 14, 2008 9:45 PM PST Gunjan Rawal (Intel) Total Points: 2,759 Status Points: 2,759 Community Manager

Thank you for your detailed observations Ami. Appreciate your comments. I recognize that the program currently encompasses online community recognition. This is something we have been debating on internally as well. I believe that the 1 year validity of the title actually works to keep the program fair and unbiased to everyone involved. It helps us make sure that we are able to recognize and reward deserving members of the community. That said I also believe that the fact that a candidate is an existing Black Belt can definitely play in favor of them being selected again next year. The Black Belt recognition program is a world-wide program albeit only a few months old and I think your comments come at a great time, when we are looking at possible changes and improvements we can make to this new program going forward in 2009. As we scale the program, I do expect the program to cover many domains/ speciality areas, especially the academic world.

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