It’s the opening week of the Beijing Olympics, so competition is on the mind of anyone with a sporting bone in their body or a power button on their TV. It’s hard to deny that strong competition brings out the best in us — Rafael Nadal wouldn’t be quite the force he is on the tennis court if he wasn’t competing at every turn with a master like Roger Federer.

Don’t you think that competing against IBM or Google has made Microsoft a better company? There’s little doubt that the sniping U.S. and French swimming teams pushed each other to a thrilling fingertip finish (and new world record) in the men’s 4×100m freestyle relay during the week. In short, competition really works and, to a large degree, that’s why we’re seeing so many new world records at this year’s Olympic games.

What about applying the concept of “friendly” competitions to developers, in that case? Some excellent companies like TopCoder are dab hands at running large scale developer competitions, and InnerWorkings has been known to host a few competitions ourselves in the past.

Well, that’s why I’m writing this post, in fact — at InnerWorkings, we’ve decided to make competitions a part of our core product. We’ve just released a new feature that allows customers and developers to create competitions based on completing our .NET learning tasks.

Drawing on the trendiest principles of social networking and gaming, we’re encouraging developers in our customer base to set up company-wide competitions where they can compete with their co-workers to complete InnerWorkings tasks.

It’s no accident that our previous forays into coding contests have shown that injecting an element of healthy competition into the learning process gives developers that little extra incentive to meet their training targets (and have some fun along the way).

Developers can now use our product to create their own team competitions and invite colleagues to participate, using our leaderboard service to see who’s out to lunch and who’s taking no prisoners! Our customers are free to dream up snazzy incentives and prizes for the contest winners — I beg you to be original with the prizes, I mean what contest doesn’t offer an iPhone or XBOX these days?!? How about a wine club membership or a DVD box set of The Office, for example?

Of course, InnerWorkings is a lofty company that is not tied to purely material rewards — developers who set private goals are rewarded with personal medals (be Michael Phelps for a day). We also award certificates for training milestones achieved and shiny cups are given to competition winners. Go on, be proud of your achievements for a bit…

Even better, all your winnings are displayed in a virtual trophy case for you to polish and enjoy with the grandkids many years from now! I encourage you to check it out — existing customers will find the competitions feature automatically enabled for their organization, and newbies can play with the contest feature using any of our free trials. Let the games begin…

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I have an embarrassing confession to make. I can easily shed a tear while watching a well-crafted movie. I really do. Someone in my family once teased me, saying that I’m so oversensitive that I would probably cry watching Daffy Duck.

There, I said it. Join my close friends and make fun of me. I’m a victim of the power of story to persuade and influence. My defenses are lowered, my disbelief is suspended and I’m vulnerable.

Not long ago, I was preparing for a technical presentation when I started wondering why movies can be so engaging and memorable while most presentations are comparatively dry and unremarkable.

Mainly thanks to Garr Reynolds and his magnificent Presentation Zen approach, I learned how to create slides with strong visual appeal: dense text and worn bullet points were replaced by a careful combination of words and images, creating a fertile ground for powerful metaphors and anecdotes.

Wow. I suddenly realized I entered the world of visual storytelling.

I also recognized, however, that my early work was somewhat episodic, like a movie with great special effects but a weak story.

It was then that I became almost obsessed by one single thought: could I learn the craft of screenwriting and adapt it to elicit emotions in my own technical presentations?

I wanted to become a better visual storyteller, going beyond my self-limiting goal of giving “right” recommendations delivered in a clear fashion. I realized I had a chance to find my own voice and give meaning to facts with my experience, passion, and subjective interpretation.

To my greatest surprise, I uncovered a fascinating world that is affecting my journey through life to no end.

Next week, I’m going to share some of my findings at the legendary Software Architecture Workshop in Crested Butte (Colorado), where some of the most renowned thought leaders of our industry will gather.

This adventure has just begun.
The rest of it will unfold in time.

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