Celebrate the Year of the Rooster with element14!

e14megan — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 21:01:42 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by e14megan on 10/6/2021 9:01:42 PM

Nimen hao, wo pengyou!

In celebration of the Chinese New Year, we're launching a brand new badge for all you amazing avians to get your digital hands (or wings) on. And as you’ve probably figured out by now, it's the Year of the Rooster! And we've a brand new badge that will be will available starting now, and running until 28th February, after which you’ll have to wait 12 years before it comes around again (given the cycle of the Chinese Zodiac).

And perhaps 2017 will prove to be your lucky year, as a little bird told me there might be a special, secret badge you can earn…

Birds of a Feather

According to the Chinese Zodiac, the Rooster symbolizes confidence, honesty, and motivation. They are hard-working individuals, and take great pride in their accomplishments.

If you happened to born in a Rooster Year, don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched. Traditionally, your “Ben Ming Nian” or “Zodiac Year” is considered unlucky.

Flocking Together

The Chinese New Year is a time to reunite and celebrate with your family, which for many means returning home for the holiday. How many? Experts are expecting almost 2.98 billion trips, with people averaging about 255 miles/410 kilometers traveled. In fact, traveling home for the Chinese New Year is considered the world’s largest annual human migration.

So while the celebration traditionally lasts for 15 days, many of the celebrants need to plan days, weeks, or even months in advance if they’re hoping to make the trip home. Tickets for traveling by air, sea, or rail on are highly coveted, and sell out fairly quickly. And even with advancements to the railway system, and the increased availability of airplane tickets, the official travel period lasts roughly 40 days to accommodate all the people and the distance they need to travel. For reference, that’s almost twice as long as it takes for a chicken egg to hatch.

Home to Roost

To hatch our Year of the Rooster badge, reply with a comment to this post about your 2017 travel plans, with a particular emphasis on any tech-related trips you have planned. Going to a Maker Faire on the other side of the world, or got a bit vacation to the Smithsonian in the works? Maybe your job is sending you to some new corner of our celestial egg. How far are you travelling to expand your technological knowledge this year?

That's not all, though. As we discussed, Rooster's are a hard working bunch, so you'll also need to have three answers to someone else's question marked as "Helpful" (the Feedback and Support section is a good source of questions, if you're looking to grab this badge quick). All of which will earn you a nice little nest egg of 50 points.

But this is an extra special badge, unlike any other. You can keep on hatching those eggs until the badge expires on February 28th. After you've earned the Year of the Rooster the first time, repeating these actions (comment on here and leave three helpful answers on the Community) will earn you another 50 points, and another 50, and so on!

The Golden Rooster

And we've one more double-extra special surprise for you as we usher in the Year of the Rooster. There's a hidden egg here on the element14 Community, for one especially helpful member to find. It may be a long time before it finally surfaces, as it'll take some serious industry on your part to uncover this treasure, so keep a close eye on your Reputation page!

One of you (and only one!) can earn the auspicious and highly coveted Golden Rooster badge, and forever be crowned the Lord of All Techno-Chickens! This is also the highest scoring badge we've ever created here at element14, so the rewards will be worth all the effort!

We're not going to tell you how to get it, but make sure you come back here and tell the world if you're the one who eventually finds the magical Golden Rooster badge! Good luck, and be careful crossing that road!

Tags: chinese new year, year of the rooster, travel