Over the past week, we ran a technology Haiku contest, because hey, we all love technology, and who doesn’t love Haiku? We had about 60 excellent submissions and set our judges to work evaluating each on three criteria:
originality
humor
thoughtfulness
The criteria was determined before the contest and posted on the page in the contest rules. Admittedly, judging a haiku contest is like judging a jazz dance recital or beat-boxing championship, but I think our judges did a fine job determining the winners. Here’s how the judging worked:
Each of three judges came up with a score from 1 to 10 for each of the three criteria. That led to a score out of 30 for each poem for each judge. The final score for each poem was determined by adding the three individual judges scores together, leading to a total score out of 90. Since this was a contest for techies, we made sure that all three judges were sufficient geeky that they could understand even the haikus that amounted to code fragments (which were very clever).
The winning High-Tech Haiku was by submitted by Todd:
My phone has me leashed
Like a dog tied to a tree
Barking constantly
- Todd
It had everything you want in a haiku, it is simple and straight forward, rhythmic, funny, and thoughtful. It is particularly effective if you imagine it being read by Mr Miyagi (the wise teacher from the Karate Kid) to impart some kind of deep lesson on Daniel-san. Todd wins the $250 gift card. Congratulations Todd!
The second and third place entries were as follows:
Kids whining, fighting
Swiping iphone to mute them
There’s an app for that?
- ChadA ghost from the past
Haunting present and future
Legacy systems
- Dave
There’s no prize for placing or showing, but you do win the admiration of your peers. And of course, if Todd is unable to perform his haiku champion duties for any reason, Chad or Dave can step in. Congratulations to Todd and thanks to everyone who entered, or stopped by to read some haiku. We will leave the site up and archived here.