Project14 | The 2019 Year in Review: Decider, Founder, and Influencer of the Year!

Year in Review

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Project Archive: Arduino | Pi / micro:bit / BB | Hardware / Software | Categories | 2019 | 2018 | 2017

The end of the year is a time for stepping back and taking a look back, so you can begin looking forward to the new year.  The first projects to come in during the 2019 calendar year were projects that were done for competitions that started in 2018 so its easy to lose site of all the amazing projects that came through this year.  Those include some of the quirkiest projects we've had such as The Thinking Cap by ntewinkel and Jumbo LED by Workshopshed,  and tiny robots such as  Tiny24hourMoBot #4 : The 24 hours is almost up by  dubbie and a miniaturized version of an old friend in Size Matters Not - An R2D2 Story by dougw, and a console version of the Gameboy in Mini Gameboy Home Console: The Gamebox DMG Consolizer by  nobble.

Around this time last year we were wrapping up last year's holiday special Merry Boxes & LEDs and who could forget all the great work that went into Connected Christmas Trees - Finished! and JackBox #6 : The Completed Article, the cool effects in Caustic XMAS , the joy of The Christmas Joy Spreading Machine , and the return of Sparky in Sparky the Power Chick Levitates - Happy New Year.  This year, we were able to feature those and many other great holiday projects from the past in the Project14 | Holiday Special 19: The Ghost of Holiday Special Past series which I suggest checking out if you haven't already!

ntewinkel:  The Thinking Cap	Workshopshed: Jumbo LED	dougw:   Size Matters Not - An R2D2 Story

Another highlight from this year is we did a couple of live streams which bookended the 2nd birthday of Project14 and used this as an opportunity to connect with some of our most active members in a couple of live streams we did. These live streams featured live show and tells from our members as well as recorded video footage from past projects to honor as many members as possible for their great work.  Thank you to our special guests  matrixlabs , samreen.islam , alfredgg , and hermitter.  They also joined us later in the year for another webinar and shared a really cool project they were doing for Halloween,  Doris the Evil Bowler Hat w/ ESP32 MATRIX Voice in Animatronics.

The year began with Home Automation projects, followed by the force of Electromagnetism ,  IoT: In the Cloud on Arduino Day, an entire Month of Robots to celebrate the birthday of Project14,  NFC/RFID ,  Programmable Logic,  Remote Monitoring & Control , Electronic Toys , and then Energy Harvesting.  We helped launch the BeagleBone AI with the Vision Thing ,  shared the scare with Halloween - Projects and Videos during Animatronics , and celebrated projects for the sake of projects during Project14 | Celebrate Makevember by Posting Projects in Any Past or Current Theme! The year finished with a bang when we went all RF with RF (Radio Frequency) and the third annual Holiday Special !  Along the way we had a Lego Darth Vader reviews your code , Gremlin in a Gas Mask , and R2D2 popped up again in R2-D2 Arcade Live and Star Wars R2D2 Uses the Force with XBee RF Virtual Wires!

The Project14 program is just a small part of the element14 community and we hope you take advantage of not just this, but all the community has to offer.  One thing we're going to do this year, that we haven't done in the past is hand out some individual awards.  We'll also have a non-binding poll where we'll ask you what your most memorable project of this year was!

Without further ado here are the 2019 Member awards for Project14.....

2019 Decider of the Year

On the to-do list is to go back to all past judges of Project14 competitions and honor them with badges and points for judging.  These are the unsung heroes who volunteer to have the monumental task of deciding who the winners of all these competitions we have. 

A case can be made for any of the following members being the Decider of the Year:

genebren:  Judge in 11 competitions	three-phase:  Judge in 10 competitions	fmilburn:  Judge in 7 competitions
shabaz:  Judge in 7 competitions	balearicdynamics:  Judge in 7 competitions	14rhb:  Judge in 6 competitions

Decider

But there can only be one......

Congratulations to DAB! You are the 2019 Decider of the Year!

DAB:  Always willing to lend a hand in judging and a judge in most!

Judge in 14 competitions since 2019.

"We all do what we can and hope that it benefits the other members.

 

"Analyzing projects and assessing them is something I used to get paid a lot of money to do and I enjoy seeing what people can do."   - DAB

2019 Founder of the Year

Founder

Great things are founded on great ideas  Project14 launched in April of 2017 as a by members for members program.  Not only is judging decided by members but members help come up with and vote on themes for each monthly competition.  During the 2019 year we've had themes chosen from ideas that came from  phoenixcomm , tonydbeck , ninjatrent , dougw , kk99 , beacon_dave,  fmilburn , vimarsh_ , and aabhas.  The member whose ideas birthed the most competitions in 2019 is dougw.

Congratulations to dougw!  You are the 2019 Founder of the Year!

dougw :  Ideas helped give birth to 5 of the competitions in 2019!

"Congratulations to everyone who participated in Project14 events. This corner of the forum has become a great success because of all the participation and now it even has its own awards - I love it.

 

"It is a special thrill to be mentioned for awards. Thank you!"  - dougw

You can vote for themes and come up with ideas for future competitions in  Project14 | You Decide the Next Monthly Project Competition!

2019 Influencer of the Year

This award goes to the most active member on Project14 in 2019.  This is the most subjective of the categories we are handing out awards for but we tried to remain as objective as possible.  We counted the 3 overlapping competitions from last year and looked at how many different projects people started and finished, how many blog posts were submitted, and how many project videos members submitted.  Also, taken into consideration were activities such as live stream appearances and theme ideas used in competitions. 

A case can be made for the following runner ups winning the influencer of the year:

dougw:  9 projects,  9 project blogs, and 13 project videos.  2019 Founder of the Year.	14rhb:  7 projects, 13 project blogs, and 8 project videos.	milosrasic98:  6 total projects, 6 project blogs, and 15 project videos.
jomoenginer:  4 projects, 16 project blogs, 11 project videos, and a LiveStream presenter.	balearicdynamics:  6 projects, 6 project blogs, 11 videos, and a LiveStream presenter.	Sean_Miller :  6 total projects, 11 project blogs, 9 project videos, and a LiveStream presenter.

Influencer

But there can only be one......

Congratulations to dubbie! You are the 2019 Influencer of the Year!

dubbie: Inspiring others with projects.  Champion of Robots.

8 projects, 48 project blogs, 51 project videos, and a LiveStream presenter!

"Well, I'm just astonished. It has never occurred to me that I was any sort of significant contributor to Element14 so to be Influencer of 2019 is just amazing. I see all these other amazing projects, so technical and detailed that seem so far out of my league, while mine just seem to be much simpler things that I fiddle about with just for fun after breakfast with a cup of tea. Thank you Element14 for the opportunity to contribute.

 

   "Congratulations as well to the other winners: DAB (Decider of the Year) and Dougw (Founder of the Year). I can remember when I first found Element14 and started to Blog that DAB made encouraging comments and Likes. As those were my first ever Blogs I did wonder what was going on, why were people Liking - and where did all my points come from! I also saw all the amazing projects produced by Dougw and just could not understand how he could know so much get it all done, plus have really nice videos. I just crank mine out with an old digital camera and hope for the best. Editing doesn't come into it.

 

   "I hope others will have as much fun as I have had over the last two years." - dubbie

Thank you for support of Project14.  There are still many more badges awarded for projects in 2018.

In addition to badges that mirror the Year End Award categories, here are some of the badges awarded to community members in 2018:

Presenter	Maker	Finisher
First Place Trophy	Grand Prize Trophy	Heart Trophy