What it REALLY Means to Have an Open Innovation Community: 25 Seconds You Must See

As many of you reading this are probably aware, we at TopCoder just wrapped up our annual event, the 2012 TopCoder Open. Our on-site competitions were exciting, new champions were crowned, and many of us at TopCoder – including scores of the community members – enjoyed the final celebration together at the Dueling Pianos establishment Howl at the Moon. But it was something that was created, spurred by a TopCoder community member who couldn’t make it to the live TCO ’12 Finals that truly embodied what being part of an Open Innovation community is all about. If you have 25 more seconds, we urge you to watch the video below and read the short set up to the video.

The below article and video was created by TopCoder copilot Mahestro who is also one of our TopCoder Open bloggers – Thank you for this inspiring post and for showing us what community is all about.

Modern call of duty: baby diapers

There are just a few reasons that could make a TopCoder finalist to skip going to an on-site TCO, in fact, I think I can count all of those reasons with only the fingers of my right hand – no one wants to skip a TCO after being qualified!!! However we’ve found one strong reason recently with one of the Studio members recently who qualified but couldn’t come onsite due to big responsibilities. He is the current champion but he won’t be able to defend the title this year, abedavera just had a baby, his first born child. I think that’s quite a strong reason for skipping anything.We miss the regular TCO attendants in the arena, we know it’s hard to get a golden shiny ticket here.  The Studio group created a short video for abedavera, sending him the best wishes in this new adventure of his life.

* There’s a typo in the video but that’s acceptable for quick editing at 2am. So from now on congralutaions means congratulations.

This above… This is what being part of a community means. 

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