Some Assembly Required

I am returning to Oslo tonight, the last of the Opera ASM'06 crew to get back to the office. We had a lot of fun, we worked pretty hard, a few of us went to Tallinn afterwards for a couple of days (Thanks for having us, Estonia!) and then, as always, we have to get on with bringing you the best browser there is.

The final work item was handing over the last of the prizes, an N770 internet tablet, to Eripaha for the widget "My simple friend fred" that he co-wrote with Asobu. Many thanks to Velmu for (yet again) doing the hard yards.



Good luck in the Widget World Cup to all the people who entered as part of the assembly competition, we hope you have enjoyed the t-shirts, Opera mobile licenses, squeeze balls, caps, lanyards, and the rest of the swag that we gave out. We're happy we didn't have to carry it home, and we believe it all went to good deserving homes.

Tonight I am not sleeping on the floor, but on a proper couch in Vihti, having spent a few more days getting to know a bit more of Helsinki. I would love to be back for next year, to meet people again or those I missed this time (I am pretty sure there were a couple of people I never even saw). Thanks to the organisers, the crew, and most of all the people, who make the assembly what it is.

And to all you folks across the road, and to Mikko in Vihti, Kippis!

--chaals

Well, we are sponsors for several competitions at the assembly, so we're putting up various prizes.

The big one is for the Browser demo competition. This year, Opera is the default browser - if you use another one, we ask for an explanation of what didn't work in Opera that you needed. Even the most useful report will win a small thank you prize. The best demo, on the other hand, wins a big cash prize. And because we're into open standards we have put up a special standards prize. The highest-ranked demo that runs in Opera without using plugins or java (there is an exception for audio only) will receive the standards prize of 500€. Even better, we will probably throw in a t-shirt! So, if you can make do with CSS, XHTML, XML, HTML, some of the cool HTML 5 features like canvas and Audio(), serious SVG support, fast Javascript, WML, Ajax, widgets, and a few other acronyms, and top the list, you can take off both prizes - well over 1000€ (and that's not even counting the T-shirt ).

Speaking of Widgets, we're running a seperate widget competition for Assembly '06. It works like this: You write a widget, and submit it for the Widget World Cup. That puts it in the running with the others in that competition, so you could win another 3000€ there. But if you come past the Opera stand and register your widget as an Assembly'06 widget, it will also be entered into the local competition. Since we had a hard time deciding what order to make the prizes, the winner picks from the prize pool, second place chooses between what's left, which goes to the third placed widget.

Oh, what are the prizes in the widget competition? Well, they include a Nokia N90 telephone (with Opera installed). And a Nintendo DS Lite (with Opera installed).

If you're desperate for Opera swag, these are both good ways to get some. We'll run a couple of little compos too - just stuff for fun.

Or you could win the ultimate prize - a job at Opera, where you get a salary, cool workmates, various kinds of loot, and maybe get paid to go to a demoparty or two (this will be my second this year Of course I have to work while I am there, so it might be a bit different). OK, strictly speaking that isn't a compo, but since you have to apply for it and convince us that you're the right kind of person to make a better browser, it is sort of like one...