I've said on a number of occasions. This contest exists to a large
degree to get people excited about the platform and generate good will
from the development community. To that end, this is the last push
and its on Google's shoulders. Follow through. If there's a list of
50 "winners" on Monday (or later in the week), and that's it, we'll
all feel like we wasted a whole lot of time.
My brother and I used to live in an apartment together. We'd both
complain to other people how the other was a huge slob. The truth?
We were both medium size slobs, but we didn't' really track who left
what where. So, we both thought the other was making the mess. This
culminated in a game of chicken with the dishes. As in, we both left
them dirty in the sink, waiting for the other to wash them. I'll
spare the details, except to say we both really lost. Point is,
without some transparency, Google will think it has done a fair job of
evaluating the apps and we're all complaining because we lost, and
we're all going to think they barely looked at our work. Or didn't
look at all.
I glossed over the "started by developers" bit. That's obviously not true.
I'm a little on the fence about the whole escalation thing. I'm sure
there won't be anything like that, but I understand why people would
want it. Transparency of the process would help a lot with that. The
idea is that if you get 4 reviews, its a lot less likely that you'll
just have "bad luck" with your scores. If your scores are bad its
because your app is bad. However, at the root of this issue is that
it doesn't appear to us scouring our logs that we've had 4 reviews.
So what percent is my support? Its Friday. I'm beat. No more math.
80%-ish. I guess.
The music analogy is awful, by the way. Dude, you watch too many movies.
I think that Pete is absolutely right. If you want to create a
community, you need one person being dedicated to this task. This is the
most common failure for creating unsuccessful communities.
This is what Guy Kawasaki says about this topic:
*Assign one person the task of building a community*.
A community needs a champion—an identifiable hero and inspiration—from
within the company to carry the flag for the community. Therefore, hire
one less MBA and allocate this headcount to a community champion. This
is a twofer: one less MBA and one great community.
Best regards
Michael