Canonical Ltd., the Ubucon Germany 2015 team, and the UbuContest 2015 team, are happy to announce the first UbuContest today! We are excited to bring you an engaging, enlightening, community-organised competition, where the Ubuntu community brings forward innovative, creative and incredible apps, scopes and ideas for the converging Ubuntu world of the future. Contestants from all over the world will have until September 18, 2015 to build and publish their apps and scopes using the Ubuntu SDK and Ubuntu platform, starting today.

We know it's not all about shiny new apps and scopes! A great platform also needs content, great design, testing, documentation, bug management, developer support, interesting blog posts, news, technology demonstrations and all of the other incredible things our community does every day. So we give you, our community members, the opportunity to nominate other community members for prizes!

We are proud to present five dedicated categories:

1. Best Team Entry: A team of up to three developers may register up to two apps/scopes they are developing. The jury will assign points in categories including "Creativity", "Functionality", "Design", "Technical Level" and "Convergence". The top three entries with the most points win.
2. Best Individual Entry: A lone developer may register up to two apps/scopes he or she is developing. The rest of the rules are identical to the "Best Team Entry" category.
3. Outstanding Technical Contribution: Members of the general public may nominate candidates who, in their opinion, have done something "exceptional" with an Ubuntu-based device, Unity8, Mir, etc. on a technical level. Each jury member has one vote, and the nominated candidate with the most jury votes wins.
4. Outstanding Non-Technical Contribution: Members of the general public may nominate candidates who, in their opinion, have done something exceptional, but non-technical, to bring the Ubuntu platform forward. So, for example, you can nominate a friend who has reported and commented on all those phone-related bugs on Launchpad. Or nominate a member of your local community who did translations for Core Apps. Or nominate someone who has contributed documentation, written awesome blog articles, etc. The rest of the rules are identical to the "Outstanding Technical Contribution" category.
5. Convergence Hero: The "Best Team Entry" or "Best Individual Entry" contribution with the highest number of "Convergence" points wins. The winner in this category will probably surprise us in ways we have yet to imagine.

Our community jury panel members Laura Cowen, Carla Sella, Simos Xenitellis, Sujeevan Vijayakumaran and Michael Zanetti will select the winners in each category. Successful winners will be awarded items from a huge pile of prizes, including travel subsidies for the first-placed winners to attend Ubucon Germany 2015 in Berlin, four Ubuntu Phones sponsored by bq and Meizu, t-shirts, and bundles of items from the official Ubuntu Shop.

We wish all the contestants good luck!

Go to ubucontest.eu for more information, including how to register and nominate folks. You can also follow us on Twitter @ubucontest, or contact us via e-mail at contest@ubucon.de.