This has all been covered already in other forum threads, but here is my opinion of a summary:

1) Never, never, ever again have a large component for "community votes", where the community is NOT verified technical people that are qualified to have input. That said, I understand that a major purpose of the Design Challenge was Marketing. The "free-for-all" voting probably creates a lot of Microchip traffic on places like Facebook, which has a certain value. But, I would suggest working out a way to separate the "technical merit" aspect from the "viral marketing" aspect, and clearly state it from the beginning. For example, have separate prize categories.

2) On the technical merit aspects, have clear definitions (with examples) of what the criteria are. For example, the "efficiency" criterium was never explained, even though there were a variety of questions about it it early on. Later, I think we all realized that nobody was paying attention to those five "merit" ratings anyway.

3) The "$400 limit" needed a much better definition, with examples of what is acceptable, and what is not.

4) I could certainly be wrong here, but in going from the Top 32 to the Top 8, I suspect that the judges used a "demographic" component as part of their decision-making process. I think this is PERFECTLY FINE, except that I think it should be stated openly in the rules, and made a true part of the contest.

5) The web site had a lot of problems, as we all know. When the contest started, the site was clearly not ready. Even today there are problems. Since the main users of the site are a bunch of technical geeks, I would suggest that "solid functionality" must be the top priority. Flashy 'browser gadgets' and cool images don't impress us geeks anyway (we know how they work!).

6) On a positive note: The contest prizes and such have been really great!

Thanks for allowing me to participate in the Challenge! I am a dedicated Microchip user, both as a hobby and professionally, and I'm sure I will continue to be. I have several hobby projects in my head - I just need more time to work on them.

Pete

As jamodio says (my $.02),

I leveraged the Microchip Facebook presence a bit but didn't see anyone else in the contest do so. Don't know what the impact was, except it appeared to be minimal if at all.

No complaints though, the prizes in the first two cuts were great.