Project14 Prizes

I agree, the shopping carts were a great way to fund future projects and were a useful addition to traditional prizes. Design challenges and road tests already provide motivation for members who like the prize format. Maybe the shopping cart program could use the regular Newark/Farnell ordering infrastructure - it just needs a method of payment like a gift card, voucher or an account credit. The shipping, duty, brokerage and taxes might still be problematic though. It is another incentive for distributors to implement a pre-paid shipping and brokerage service, especially since they could negotiate a much better deal than an individual on an individual purchase. This may already be available on larger orders, but shopping carts need to be large enough to ensure these fees are included.

I participate in contests for lots of reasons, but there is a usually a go/no go decision based on the sum of the positive reasons such as kudos, the prize, bragging rights, free kit, project challenge, learning opportunity, creative outlet, achievement satisfaction,  available parts, and technical interaction versus the drawbacks such as cost, effort, time commitment, risk, public critique and ridicule, financial feasibility, etc.

Shopping cart prizes played an important role that exceeded a single contest and a single positive reason since they significantly impacted the available parts factor which is critical in making projects financially feasible and also critical in meeting project deadlines.

I agree, the shopping carts were a great way to fund future projects and were a useful addition to traditional prizes. Design challenges and road tests already provide motivation for members who like the prize format. Maybe the shopping cart program could use the regular Newark/Farnell ordering infrastructure - it just needs a method of payment like a gift card, voucher or an account credit. The shipping, duty, brokerage and taxes might still be problematic though. It is another incentive for distributors to implement a pre-paid shipping and brokerage service, especially since they could negotiate a much better deal than an individual on an individual purchase. This may already be available on larger orders, but shopping carts need to be large enough to ensure these fees are included.

I participate in contests for lots of reasons, but there is a usually a go/no go decision based on the sum of the positive reasons such as kudos, the prize, bragging rights, free kit, project challenge, learning opportunity, creative outlet, achievement satisfaction,  available parts, and technical interaction versus the drawbacks such as cost, effort, time commitment, risk, public critique and ridicule, financial feasibility, etc.

Shopping cart prizes played an important role that exceeded a single contest and a single positive reason since they significantly impacted the available parts factor which is critical in making projects financially feasible and also critical in meeting project deadlines.

dougw said:

I agree, the shopping carts were a great way to fund future projects

You could call it "pay it forward". I bet that a lot* of components made it into a blog.

*sample of one: in my case virtually all of them

The problem that I’ve had in the past with shopping carts is the availability of items.  Farnell/Newark hasn’t in the past done as well as other distributors in terms of inventory of the types of items that would help me most for new projects.  I buy a lot of sub $100 development boards and sensors and have had difficulty finding parts in stock.  And backordering stuff was a nightmare for Tariq because the process didn’t work.  

I much prefer the Visa/Mastercard ecard.  I default to checking Newark first but would like the ability to purchase something if it were only available elsewhere.