Ladies and gentleman of the Phoenix hacker community, we need your help!  Over the years, the PHX2600 has been a thriving community with dozens of bright minded individuals, each with a unique set of ideas and skills and a desire to share their knowledge with their fellow hackers.  There would be meeting after meeting with presentation after presentation.  Hackers helping hackers (and interested sheeple as well) learn and expand their knowledge.

That brings us to today.  As of late it seems the PHX2600 forum/blog seems to have quieted down a considerable amount and, at times, feels empty and forgotten.  The meetings are still going on and, for the most part, are of a reasonable size and bring lots of good information and occasionally presentations, but the bulk of our community discussions seemed to always come from the site.  In an effort to reinvigorate some contribution to our site and potentially drive more traffic to it, I’d like to announce the Save our Site Contest.

Contest Overview

As a participant, write an article on a topic of your choice that is in some way relevant to the PHX2600 (hacking, modding, phreaking, etc..).  These articles will be published via our blog after review and voted upon by our members at the end of the competition.  The article with the most number of votes at the end of the competition will be awarded a $30 credit to our swag store (http://www.cafepress.com/phx2600) paid for by me.  If anyone else would like to contribute to the winners pool, we may be able to have a second and third prize as well (please contact me if interested in contributing).

Rules

  • The article must pertain to the PHX2600 scene in some way.  This can be as directly relevant as an article explaining how to pen test LAMP servers or as loosely relevant as “hacking together” the perfect formula of pony food to give them a pretty coat.
  • 400 words + is desired, but not required.  If you can make a good, coherent article in 300 words, great!
  • Original content is a must. Copy/pasta (plagiarism) will be means for immediate disqualification.  Currently published content (on PHX2600.org or another website) will not be counted for entry (sorry Penguin, Evil1 and anyone else who’s already contributed… we still love you!).
  • Images/diagrams are desired (if relevant).
  • All articles must be submitted to PHLAK by the deadline in one of the following formats: .txt, .odt, .doc, Google Docs or by creating a draft on the blog (email me if you need access to this).
  • You do not have to be signed up on the forums or blog or regularly attend meetings to submit an article.  If you don’t have an account though, make sure to provide me with some contact information.
  • Multiple articles will be accepted for multiple entries.  If you submit more than one article, each article will be weighted separately for quality and poor quality articles will not be count for entry. (Basically, if you submit 10 x 200 word articles, there’s a good chance none will qualify for entry)
  • Any and all entries submitted are subject to be posted on the blog, even if they do not qualify for entry to the competition. And we reserve the right to not post any entry we feel is inappropriate or does not meet the criteria stated above.  All entries published will be released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license and credited to the author properly.
  • AMENDMENT: PHX2600 Wiki articles will also be accepted for entry.

Deadline

All submissions must be received by midnight (Arizona time) Friday, September 3rd 2010.  Articles will then be voted upon by the community and a winner will be chosen.

Ideas and Inspirations

Don’t know what to write about? Here’s a few ideas to get you rolling:

  • Detailed method on how to pen test a particular system in wide use.
  • Tutorial on installing and using a piece of software (John the Ripper, nmap, git, etc.).
  • An article about how many people are “hackers” in their daily lives but don’t know it.
  • A breakdown and analysts of a piece of hardware and it’s internal components.
  • A story about urban exploration and/or socially engineering.
  • Interesting topics from Defcon or another convention.

Final Thoughts

Even if you’re not interested in the prizes, we’d like to encourage you to contribute anyway.  The purpose of this contest is to stimulate the community and possibly drive some traffic to us as well.  If you don’t have something to write about or just don’t feel like it, help out by spreading the word, and not just to your “hacker” friends, but to anyone you think could make a contribution.

PHLAK’s Contact Info

Email / G-Talk / G-Docs: Chris@ChrisKankiewicz.com
Twitter: @PHLAK