Choosing the Winner for the Pro Ministry of Testing Dojo Membership!

Wow that was difficult!

Back on May 6th, I announced the contest for a Pro Ministry of Testing Dojo membership. I was inspired by Kristine Corbus, but was stunned that she only got 4 responses when she did this! I got SIXTY responses! Some squeaked in after the deadline, but I let them in anyway 😀

Applicants had to answer three questions:

• What do you want to learn from the Dojo?
• How will you #PayItForward? Meaning, how will you use what you learn to help others?
• Why should you be chosen? What sets you apart from others that may apply?

You all are AMAZING! I wish I could afford to give every one of you a Pro Dojo membership! Did you know you can earn a 6 month one by writing for the Dojo? It’s true! And they’ll help you, too, it’s a great process!

Anyway, on to how I picked the winner!

Process of Elimination

I had to narrow down those 60 responses somehow. First thing I did was export the responses to Google spreadsheet and hid the columns with identifying information (name (optional) and email address). This way I would be less biased about the answers.

I started reading and quickly realized I needed a rubric to grade the answers on. So I came up with a 1-3 scale for each question:

• knows what they want to use the Dojo to learn (1 – unclear, 2 – some plan but vague, 3 – very well thought out)
• how they will pay it forward (1 – unclear or no plan, 2 – some plan but vague, 3 – well thought out, real “give back” ideas)
• why they should be chosen (1 – not compelling, 2 – somewhat compelling, 3 – inspiring)

I read through each answer, and graded them all. Then I summed up the scores, and ended up with…

EIGHT answers with a top score!

Did I mention this was difficult? Wow…

So how could I narrow it down further? I decided that the second question, on how they would pay it forward, should have more weight. So I re-assessed just that answer for each entry.

And I ended up with…

TWO answers with a top score.

You folks are very awesome!

With these two, I couldn’t choose between them – they were both too amazing and awesome and really going to use their Pro Dojo account to the max.

So there are TWO WINNERS!

 

The Winners Are…

Amanda Delatorre and Yashika Jayasinghe! They both had great answers to the questions, and plans to #PayItForward that I loved.

They have both been emailed for confirmation and links to share on this post – I’ll update this as new links are available.

Congratulations Amanda and Yashika, I can’t wait to see what you learn and how you share that knowledge with the world!