What are some good awards for a software development competition?

Budget: $1200

Some context:
We are organizing our flagship event with six tracks - each has its own set of talks and events. For the Software Development track, we are organising a Battlesnake competition and would love to get some ideas about the awards.

P.S. We are giving them general event swags too, but need something relevant to software dev as an addition

P.P.S. Giving money directly is not an option due to some administrative stuff

If you can't give money, can you give something that's as good as money? Amazon vouchers are pretty ubiquitous these days.

Basically, no matter what you give isn't going to please everyone.

Gtx 3080

Vodka

$$$

I would avoid purchasing items as because it's no fun if the award is $100 headphones when you already own $150 headphones. Or if you wanted on-ears but the price was over-ears. Just leaves people thinking "wish they let me pick what I wanted"

Gift cards are great.

Consumables are always good gifts - even if you already own the same thing you can still use more.

Wine is the default gift for house parties for a reason.

And if you get something you don't like you can re-gift it the next time you go to a party.

I'd be happy to get some expensive coffee.
Fits well with the dev theme too 😬

Don't give them any Work for the next 2 Sprints

@jiraTicket the bad part about gift cards is that they go old quickly. Then they either go to waste or you buy something you don't need.

Amazon vouchers. They expire after what - 10 years, and you put them on your account so they get spent automatically. I applaud anyone who won't make an Amazon purchase in a decade, but I find it unlikely.

If it were me I'd split it 1st/2nd/3rd place as $500/$200/$100, and then maybe have 8 runners up that receive $50. If you have a larger number of possible prizes it keeps people more motivated. Few really believe they'll manage to snag that top prize, but nearly a dozen prizes and they'll be more likely to go for it.

Damn ig the general consensus seems to be amazon gift cards and it makes sense too.

And since this is supplemented by a general event swag, getting more material items doesn't make sense.

Thanks everyone!! I think we'll go with this only!

“Non-cash” prizes in doge, cardano, eth, xrp/ripple, etc. Like gift cards, but (almost) infinitely better.

Books are always a good option.

UDemy credits would be nice too, though kind of sends mixed signals. Then again good devs keep up on things and continually learn new tech.