Photo SE Birthday Celebration?

Question

Did you know that Photo SE's graduation was one year ago on October 28th? Congratulations!

How about a contest or some other fun activity to stir things up a little? After a year of great Q&A, we'd like the opportunity to "give back" for everyone's hard work.

Anniversary events area a great way to spark some interest in the extracurricular activity in your site (more meta participation). An “anniversary event" can be just about anything. Take a look at Super User’s 2nd Birthday Super Contest for inspiration. It doesn’t have to be a contest. Dream up whatever you feel the community will find interesting, and go for it.

Start a meta post or chat event to work out the details. Rally support for your event and bring it to our attention ([email protected]). We're really interested in community-lead initiatives, so let’s just say, if you can work out the details, we’re very motivated to say “go for it!”

Answer 1

Are we lookin' at a similar budget to the contest at Super User? (About $1000 in "real" prizes plus another $500 in swag.) Because I'd rather see the money spent on making this happen: How can we make Stack Exchange-sponsored gear reviews into a reality?

Answer 2

I think we need to attract more new users who are asking questions about photography rather than looking for starting-out camera recommendations.¹

So, I'd like to see a birthday celebration that encourages this kind of growth in our userbase. Maybe we have some sort of "bring your friends" contest, although I'm not sure how that'd work exactly.

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_{1. I think we need a good friendly approach to the latter as well, but here I'm thinking about what the site really needs to grow in a positive way.)}

Answer 3

It would be a nice idea to provide some kind of scholarship (in cash or camera equipments) to a new but promising photographer. However, the selecting process would be a difficult one to manage.

Answer 4

A logical event would be a photo contest of some sort. Of course, we have the weekly image contest, but that serves a narrow purpose and as such the submissions and winners are likewise somewhat narrow. We should have a contest with a theme related to Stack Exchange: participation, questions, answers, awesomeness.

This should be something that would be bigger than the weekly photo, perhaps with "celebrity" judges — although it would also be nice to include the meritocracy/democracy that makes Stack Exchange work so well. In any case, the judging should be more involved than a handful of anonymous votes.

There should be some real prices — money at B&H, say.

And, we should promote the contest beyond the site. The current contest is really something that draws in involved community members. This should target the world, and draw people to SE as a side effect.

If we could tie the contest into actually generating questions, that'd be really exciting, but I'm not quite sure how to do that. (Ideas?)