I have this idea which I want to tell you about. The more I think about it, the more ideas I get, but unfortunately the whole project is probably too big to become reality. I'm talking about the Flasholympics, the World Cup of Flash.

Flash has become a worldwide topic. I dare to say that whereever there are computers in the world there are people who are working with Flash and some of them are really good at that. Flash is very versatile so there are also different disciplines people can be specialized in: animation, art, typography, programming, games, experiments, applications, video, visualization etc. Furthermore because Flash is so flexible and complex all over the world there are lots of communities in different languages that communicate about it, exchange knowledge, help each other or show off. Unfortunately due to langugage barriers some of this information only stays within these local groups, or it's unidirectional: from English to French or Russian or Japanese, but seldom the other way. That's a pity and to some it may transport the false image that great achievements in Flash are only made in the English speaking part of the internet.

Sometimes though you do have the chance to get exposed to ideas and solutions that were created in other parts of the word. And that is in competitions and festivals. For example a few days ago the winners of the Flashforward Film Festival 2003 were announced. You can see entries from Korea, Poland, Italy, Hungary, USA, Germany and probably some other countries that are hidden behind a ".com" suffix.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a platform that allows us to showcase the diverstity and the things we have in common throughout the international Flash community? A place where the most talented Flashers of the world can compete? The Olympics of Flash?

I really imagine a competition similar to sports: it's not about submitting things that were done for a client or were lying in a folder for month. No - I see several challenges in various disciplines where individuals and teams from different nations compete for the medals. Different disciplines also means that not one person does everything. Like in the Olympics only the best of their countries take part in the area that they are specialized in. This means that there have to be preliminary decisions organized in the participating countries. This is something where I see the local boards and forums as a National Flasholympic Committee (NFC). The disciplines will reflect the versatility of Flash: speed, beauty, efficiency, size, accessibility, intelligence, teamwork, just to name a few.

Some disciplines that I could imagine are:

• Speed: solve a given problem in the shortest possible time
  
• Efficiency: solve a given problem and achieve the highest framerate
  
• Size: optimize a movie so it has the smallest footprint
  
• Size: create a movie from scratch limited to a maximum filesize. A jury decides which one's the best, based on criteria like complexity, beauty or usefulness.
  
• Beauty: in a limited time create a movie with given elements. A jury will decide who's movie is the most beautiful
  
• Teamwork: like in a relay race starting with a set of elements a movie gets passed from one team member to another who works on it for a given time. The most beautiful wins.
  
• Accessibility: a Paralympic competition. A given application has to be made as accessible as possible.
  
• Intelligence: the competitors have to create an AI game engine for a given problem that have to fight against each other.
  

I guess you see the possibilities. Unfortunately ideas are worthless without the execution. And this project would take lots of organization and time. Definitely something I'm not able to do alone. Comments are more than welcome.