Folding Challenges, Incentives and Awards

Overclockers Australia & Folding@Home

While Overclockers Australia (OCAU) has a strong presence in many Distributed Computing projects, one of the most active and sucessful projects over time has been Folding@Home (F@H). Part of this sucess is due to incentives such as challenges, competitions and awards. Challenges and awards bring bragging rights for the victors or maybe a digital trophy...quack! Competitions give members the chance to win items such as PC hardware that can in turn increase folding output. These competitions are made possible by hardware or financial donations.

Competitions

• Monthly Folding Competitions - Giving away hardware such as a GPU. "Raffle" with tickets awarded according to folding output for the month.
  • April 2011 | May 2011 | June 2011

Challenges

• Chimp Challenge - A handicap based inter-team challenge where each team races to a unique target total.
• The Relic Trophy Born out of OCAU's intense battle against the The Horde (Picture)

Awards

• Folding Total Points Milestones
• Folding Points per Week Milestones
• Folder of the Month
• Folder of the Year
• Folding Dedication Hall of Fame

Folding Milestones

Almost every member of the OCAU F@H team is able to qualify for a folding milestone. There are two types of milestone - total points and points per week. The minimum needed to get a milestone is 10,000 points in total. This would take less than a week to achive with even a basic system. Awards are available in the form of forum signatures and avatars (badges).

• Total Points (Forum Signature|Forum Badge)
• Points per Week (Forum Signature|Forum Badge)

Folder of the Month

Members are nominated in the distributed computing forums and later in the month a vote is cast. The winner gets the forum title "Iron Folder" for 1 month. Iron Folder

• April 2011 Iron Folder | May 2011 Iron Folder

Iron Folder Honor Board:

• leroyxx
• Teddy2
• devoid001
• EvilGenius
• Graham.Abbott
• Sniper
• petercr
• Bollocks
• mitsimonsta
• OLDsniper
• RETARD
• Fat80y
• Boky

Folder of the Year

Once a year in May the winners of Iron Folder of the Month, for the previous 12 months, go into a double poll - see Iron Folder Sticky for full rules of how this is done. The Winner will honored and not eligible for further nominations of Folder of the Month.

Folding Dedication Hall of Fame

Some members just put more into the team than others, the Folding Dedication Hall of Fame was created to acknowledge those members. As part of the old OCAU F@H site, the Hall of Fame has not been added to for many years. As such, there are many current members who would most definatley have been inducted into the Hall of Fame were it still in service. The Folder of the Month award above is the closest thing we now have to recognising individual member's efforts for the good of the team. A discussion about the Folding Dedication Hall of Fame and this wiki page in general can be found on the OCAU Distributed Computing forums here. This list is based on the old OCAU folding site, please discuss in the forum thread before making changes.

Inductees

• Lombers 

  The person who has been folding the longest of anybody in our team. He is the founding member of the team and it is he who is responsible for what we are today. For without him we wouldn't be the world leading team in Folding@Home 2.

• VooDoo 

  For returning to the fold after the nasty core_65 ate into his wallet to the tune of $400. It takes a brave dedicated soul to get back into folding after a knock back like that.

• Lucus Maximus 

  One of Stromlo High's ex pupils has moved onto Canberra College and has taken his folding enthusiasm with him and it has spread to this school as well. But Lucus isn't content with just one school he is still guiding Stromlo along with their folding as well.

• Leachy 

  For enduring the mind numbing noise of a delta fan by sleeping with ear plugs in. The world could end and he wouldn't have a clue what's going on.

• chestRcopRpot 

  For Folding under the most adverse conditions that mere mortals of lesser intestinal fortitude wouldn't put up with, a delta screaming in his bedroom whilst sleeping blissfully contented that his folding is nice and cool.

• Wing 

  For oneupmanship at its best regarding who can build the fastest machine and produce the Fastest Folding time. He and Bravo are pushing their CPU's to the max in the name of Folding well done guys its an interesting race.

• Bravo 

  For oneupmanship at its best regarding who can build the fastest machine and produce the Fastest Folding time. He and Wing are pushing their CPU's to the max in the name of Folding well done guys its an interesting race.

• Amran 

  For creating the Fastest Folding lists and taking friendly team based competition to a second level. Amran has invited other folding teams to participate in our Fastest Folding Machine competition.

• Bollocks 

  The leader of OCAU folding team for many years, many of our greatest achievments can be attributed to his leadership. Bollocks ran the folding web site and was a major contributer of points in the time before SMP or GPU folding. Despite still using the classic CPU client, Bollocks remains in the OCAU top ten to this day.

• Corbin 

  Corbin is the quiet achiever. He encouraged members of other DC projects (SETI) to help out when the [H]orde were closing and he stayed folding for SlackNet when the rest of the SETI crunchers went home.

• DGROMS.com

  For going the extra mile to help the team regain the Folding Grail. A massive producer in the days of single CPU folding.

• zzsstt

  The quite achiever who never fails to deliver and has been the mainstay of our Folding efforts since the early days of FAH1.

• Norgs

  For helping put the Overclockers Australia Folding team on top with FAH2. A man with just a few machines, another massive producer in the days before SMP or GPU clients.

• EazyduzIt

  For folding under trying conditions and persevering where many would give in. EazyduzIt is a SETI cruncher at heart and he has put all his resources into helping the Folding team ahead of his first love.

• badg3er

  For pushing the Folding cause in many a place and to make the general population aware of what we are all about.

• leonard

  For generosity above and beyond the call of duty. An act that perpetuates and embraces the folding spirit of this great team.

• javascripterror

  For generosity above and beyond the call of duty, where giving benefits more than the individual it helps nurture a feeling of belonging and being part of a team.

• plext

  For continued service and commitment to the Folding team. Moving countries didn't stop plext nor did many broken bones after a being knocked off his bike.

• IG-72

  For "borging" a large number of hospital PC's to fold for the cause. Forum thread here. Also our top producing American member at the time.

• mitsimonsta

  For dedication above and beyond, for ubiquity, and for decency. For tenacity, persistence and never wavering enthusiasm for the team and the ultimate goal.

• ASSMAN

  For not lying down and accepting the status quo. For always pushing for more, for better, for ramp. For only accepting one outcome, the duck back in Team 24 hands. For being the first in our team to achieve 1 million points per week...more info.

The above list was taken from the old OCAU F@H site, there is a second list in existance (FBOX donations) that will be added shortly.