February 14, 2015 Year In Review
OK, I admit, I am late in posting this “2014 Year in Review” blog but it is no secret that I don’t blog as much as I’d like to and I don’t nearly get the traffic my friend Jeff Douglas gets. Don’t get me wrong, just because you don’t hear from me, it doesn’t mean that you are not on my mind constantly. I have been working hard behind the scenes ramping up the past 8 months as your community advocate. Understanding our global community, your frustrations and motivations, programs you are interested in, etc, have been a primary focus for me and my team and I have to say that I have thoroughly enjoyed it.
So, what are some of the exciting highlights from last year? Take a look:
- In 2014, we grew our community by almost 20%, adding nearly 119,000 new members from all over the globe.
- Although we saw a slowdown in SRM participation, we still had nearly 100,000 SRM submissions with C++ once again being the preferred language of choice followed by Java and Python.
- Our customers posted over 6200 development and design challenges with Assembly, Code, UI prototype, and Web design being the most popular challenge types.
- And last but not the least, our members earned a whopping $9.5 Million dollars in 2014 with average payments being around $6,700.
This powerful community never ceases to amaze me.
For more detail on our year, check out our infographic:
Other Noteworthy Highlights from 2014:
- Launch of the Community Advisory Board (CAB)
- Release of the newly designed web based Arena
- Introduction of LUX challenge series
- Learn Swift Series
- Introduced new limited-time member incentive programs such as: New Member Bonus Program, Referral Program, etc
I know we as a team didn’t achieve everything we had set out to do in 2014 but when you step back and look at all our achievements, what this community has been able to do is nothing short of amazing. I would like to ask you all for continued patience as we go through natural changes and evolution. I can assure you that, one thing that will be a constant is our commitment to you and our desire to be working together with you to make this community even better.
In closing, I want to thank you, our community members, for continuing to push topcoder to be *the* community for all developers and designers worldwide. 2015 is shaping up to be another great year and we have a number of exciting announcements and programs in store that we will be sharing with you soon. I hope you’re as excited as we are about the road ahead and our community’s outlook. We look forward to serving you in 2015!
Happy Valentine’s Day from the entire topcoder staff!
