Ideas for Programming Forum Contest Prizes

[mleh]

Howdy,

I'm starting up a programming forum, and need ideas for some contest prizes. I need a few at different levels, right now I've thought something like a subscription to oreillylearning.com for a year (giving the winner access to all the books). Not sure if this would do the job in attracting visitors, and visitors to sign up - just a bit dull - and people who are posting quite a bit wouldn't necesarrily find the books a whole lot more useful.

I need something that gives a bit more 'bang for buck' - can anyone think of any? What would get your toes all tingly and signup? It's going to be for a mixture of things, like posting, referring, helpful articles/blog mentions. Cash is a bit boring on itself, I will be giving out cash prizes but don't want all the prizes to me cash.

Any ideas would be most greatly appreciated

 

[mleh]

I want 3 or so tiers of prizes, but the budget should be an upper limit of $2000/£1000 (though could increase if it's particularily successful).

I've though that some items from http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/ might be a nice gift either in addition to the prizes, or for something like best topic in a category.

Thanks

 

[mleh]

Thanks for the suggestion - shame it's a pretty closed forum - I'm only really interested in targetting this to programmers at the moment (planning another promotion for webmasters).

 

[mleh]

these are ment to be pretty good and they have quite a range too..
http://www.lynda.com/store/category.aspx?categoryid=76&startpage=0

and how handy for a little prize is this..
http://www.lynda.com/store/ProductInfo.aspx?productid=25&ref=hex

edit:
Online Training Library:
http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/index.asp

a heap of samples:
http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modListing.asp#titleListing

It's too much like that oreilly book subscription I was on about. Pretty dull I think - definately wouldn't get me signing up. Thanks again though

Hmm.. I guess it's just cash prizes