We appreciate your contributions to Intel Software Network James :)

On another note, we are just back from a fantastic, exciting week at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF)! Lot of great announcements and news. In case you missed it, check out some of the on-demand keynotes.

I had a great time meeting all the Black belt Software Developers at our annual meet up. (Some pictures from Steve Lionel are posted here) Such a great opportunity to hear from you guys on things we can do better and improve in our communities. Keep the ideas coming!

Gaston is an independent IT consultant, and a freelance author. He has extensive experience in parallel programming and multi-core. Gaston has been a phenomenal contributor to the Intel Software Network enthusiastically sharing his experience and expertise in blogs, forums, videos and even on Intel Software Network TV!

Packt Publishing has recently published his book C# 2008 and 2005 Threaded Programming: Beginner's Guide.

Congratulations Gaston! We appreciate your leadership in our communities!

On another note, 4 days to the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) and the excitement is building! Looking forward to meeting all the Black belt Software Developers at our annual meet up. See you at IDF!

Congratulations Dr. Matthew Wolf! Matt has been an active member of the Academic Community for 2 years and has spent valuable time presenting webinars, representing us at events and offering his advice and expertise on areas of opportunity for expanding the inclusion of parallelism in undergraduate curricula.  Matt was also the first recipient of the Intel Leadership in Academia Award and is now one of our first academic community Black Belts. Matt is a valued member of our Academic Advisory board and holds a unique position of leadership within the community. Congratulations Matt!

Congratulations Tom Murphy! Tom Murphy exhibits phenomenal community leadership in the academic community. Tom is a member of the Parallelism Working Group, is co-authoring an upcoming paper to help define new ACM undergraduate CS curriculum recommendations. Tom is also a co-host of the “Teach Parallel!” discussion series and an active blogger. Tom’s outstanding breadth of contributions to the Academic Community—on and off line – include leading Train the Trainer Supercomputing Education Trainings on Parallelism, and speaking on sponsored panels and in video presentations. Congratulations Tom!

Alexey Kukanov is the next Black Belt Intel Employee. A member since early 2007, Alexey has more than 500 forum and blog contributions. Alexey is an active, valued contributor in both Russian and English Intel Software Network communities. Thank you for going above and beyond Alexey! Congratulations!

Amongst other news, we are getting ready for our Annual Black Belt Meet Up at IDF this year. It will give us an opportunity to meet all you Black Belt Software Developers in person, catch up on all that is cool and new at the Intel Developer Forum and also save some time to absorb the fog, the fantastic food and the multi-cultural experience that is San Francisco : )

Congratulations to Timothy Prince and Vladimir Dudnik, our latest Intel Employee Black Belt title holders :). Tim has over 4,000 contributions to his credit and has put in a phenomenal level of time & effort supporting members in the discussion forums over the past 8 years. Thank you Tim!

Vladimir, an ISN member since 2004 has over 2800 contributions and has been very active resolving customer issues and supporting the community on IPP, multi-core application development, software optimization, and image processing/codecs. Thank you for going above and beyond Vladimir! Congratulations!

Dmitriy Vyukov has been a very active contributor to the Intel TBB discussion forums. He has also enthusiastically provided product feedback and suggestions for improvement. Recently, Dmitriy contributed his modified version of concurrent hash map for Intel TBB. Dmitriy also hosts a blog on ISN English and Russian communities. Appreciate your participation, enthusiasm and support Dmitriy. Congratulations! You are an Intel Black Belt Software Developer.

Most of you would know Raf Schietekat from the Intel TBB discussion forums. We appreciate Raf’s invaluable contributions to TBB. In addition to discussion forums, Raf has helped tremendously by submitting several proposals to Intel Threading Building Blocks, ranging from a new concurrent hash map version to enhanced atomics features and portability. Congratualtions Raf!

That is all from me today folks…As always, I am eager to hear from you on the recognition program – how are we doing and what can we do better? If you know someone who should be nominated as an Intel Black Belt Software Developer, just drop me a note at gunjan dot s dot rawal at intel dot com.

Jugoslav has been a contributor to Intel Software Network for over 8 years (wow!) and has actively supported our communities by participating in the discussion forums, providing product feedback and more. Your contributions are greatly appreciated and valued! Congratulations to Jugoslav :-).

We’ll be back with more Black Belt announcements soon…watch this space!

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…

One of the new features is also a ranking system and community recognition. While the Intel Black Belt Software Developer title recognizes members for demonstrating community leadership and strong technical expertise, there are many other members who participate actively, share knowledge & contribute to our communities. This ranking system recognizes the achievements of these members and their contributions to Intel Software Network communities.

Intel Brown Belt Software Developer and Intel Green Belt Software Developer are the new titles. (Yes :) … they fall in line with the Black Belt title we launched recently, the icons are however different for these titles)

Read more about the criteria for these titles here. Both these new titles are based on a points system and are controlled by software while the Intel Black Belt Software Developer Title is based on nomination.

As you accumulate points, you will progress through the two levels and receive associated icons. You can view a history of your contributions, associated points as well as title in your user profile (which also is now more detailed, showing a history of all your contributions and points accumulated).

With that, enough said about the recognition program. Take a minute to check out the new features on Intel Software Network, find your belt status and as always, let me know what you think :)

I very much appreciate all the ideas. All I can say is keep them coming and we will keep working towards including them into the program :-)

I also have more changes coming up to the recognition program and I will be ready with those in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned!!

]]> http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2008/09/12/thank-you-intel-software-network/feed/ http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2008/08/20/announcing-the-intel-black-belt-software-developers/ http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2008/08/20/announcing-the-intel-black-belt-software-developers/#comments Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:59:42 +0000 Gunjan Rawal (Intel) http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2008/08/20/announcing-the-intel-black-belt-software-developers/ A few months ago, I was given the charter to understand how we could identify the most active members in our communities and make them feel more valued. I interviewed a number of our community members to understand why they contributed and what we could do to reward, recognize them. The result is a new title to recognize members for their technical expertise, sharing knowledge and for collaborating to make our communities stronger.  

‘Intel Black Belt Software Developer’ is the new title designed to recognize members for their time and effort to help make Intel Software Network a valuable developer resource. Why Black Belt? Because a Black Belt connotes mastery that comes from developing competency and gaining a deep understanding, which is what our members demonstrate. 

There are a number of benefits associated with this title and you can find these here, but more importantly I envision this title as means for us to thank members of our communities for their valuable contributions.

blackbelt_black_md

Igor Levicki and Jim Dempsey are our first two Black Belt Software Developers. Igor is based in Belgrade, Serbia and works on code optimization, image, video, and audio processing as well as threading and GPGPU programming. Most of you would recognize Igor from his active participation in the discussion forums.

 Jim has an experience spanning stints with reputed companies such as Digital Equipment Corp, EDUCOMP. Jim is a frequent contributor to the Parallel Programming Forum. Most recently Jim joined us at the Research@Intel event along with Aaron Tersteeg, community manager for Threading for Multi-Core community.

Congratulations to Jim and Igor :-). Stay tuned for more Black Belt recognitions over the next couple of months.

That said this title is only a starting point. I am excited to hear from you on this recognition, benefits and more. What do you think we can do better? What would you like to see as part of recognition?

Post a comment, or drop me a note at gunjan dot s dot rawal at intel dot com. I am excited to hear from you.