Date: 15-Dec-06
Author: Russ Weakley

For those that missed the announcement in Wellington last week...

Webstock and WIPA are more than pleased - in fact hugely excited - to announce "World Wide Web-a-thon", the start of an international series of web competitions.

Yes, geek Olympics is happening!

The concept is simple. A team of the representatives from two countries take each other on, at the same location, to build a complete website in 24 hours. No excuses, no extensions and no overrun budgets.

What sort of website will the teams be building? Webstock and WIPA will be approaching a range of charity organisations to see who is interested in coming on board. The aim is to hand over a fully functional website to a Charity organisation at the end of the 24 hour period.

Each country selects a team, with people filling the following positions:

• Project manager
• Information architect
• Graphic designer
• HTML/CSS marker-upper
• Programmer
• Usability purveyor
• Captain's choice (can be from any speciality)

Neither of the teams will know who they'll be building the website for until a briefing session at the beginning of the 24 hour period. They'll be given content, images and the chance to receive a brief from a representative of the chosen charity. They'll have complete freedom as to the platform and setup they use - Ruby on Rails, Windows or LAMP, it's all part of the fun.

At the end of 24 hours, a team of judges will review both sites and select the winner. International pride, bragging rights and a trophy will follow for the winning team.

So when does it start? June 2007 will see the inaugural competition - a trans-Tasman grudge match between Australia and New Zealand to be held in Australia.

This event will include live blogging as well as Twitter and YouTube action throughout the 24 hour period. For those who cannot participate, you will still be able to see the entire event taking place online.

Webstock 2008 (Wellington, New Zealand in February 2008) will see the geek Olympics really take off with international teams from as many countries as can make it. It will be 24 hours of international competition followed by a week of the best web event held in New Zealand!

There's a lot more details to work through but we think it's such a good idea we want to get everyone else as excited as we are.

Are you interested in being a representative for your country? Are you interested in organising a team for your country? Stay tuned for future announcements!

Tags: web-a-thon