Fawntia, From San Francisco, 306 Fans, 2 Hubs, Joined 2 years ago
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An Interview with Fawntia Fowler
The HubPages software engineer who makes HubPages contests possible!
Fawntia Fowler, the very same HubPages engineer who brought us the HubNuggets program and contributed loads to the HubPages Ad Program, also makes HubPages' contests possible! In the days leading up to each contest launch, Fawntia does a brilliant job of putting the contest pages in place and setting up all of the internal reporting that allows us to keep track of entries.
Fawntia was kind enough to take a moment from her engineering to share with us a bit more about her work on HubPages contests - and herself in general! We hope you enjoy this special edition Hubber-to-Hubber interview below.
First, could you tell us just a bit about yourself?
I was born in Idaho, moved around a lot as a kid, and eventually ended up near the Oregon coast. I went to an unusual public school in Oregon where everybody learned Japanese. Then I studied math (and some physics and computer science) at Reed College and Stanford before starting work at HubPages. As far as hobbies go, I like to sew and make jewelry (though I'm no expert at either). I read a lot, and the best part of my day is often reading while at the gym or on the bus. I enjoy traveling, and look forward to going to Vietnam with my husband and his family someday.
What was the first HubPages contest that you helped to build?
The first ever HubPages contest was called HubLove, which I didn't work on because I didn't work at HubPages yet. But I have helped to build all five of the contests since HubLove, the first of which was called Helpful Health Hubs. Helpful Health Hubs was the most work for me because we were starting from scratch. We created a system that is very re-usable, though, so from a technical point of view each subsequent contest involved little work. (Creating a new contest is much more work for Simone than for me!)
Many Hubbers do not realize the mechanisms behind each HubPages contest that make them possible - could you briefly introduce us to the elements, both visible and invisible, of a HubPages contest?
Sure. After the marketing department figures out how the contest will work and what it will be named, our designer James creates a logo for it. Then I do my part by plugging in some numbers to tell the computer what days the contest will run, which topic the contest is about, and so on. There is a special report that HubPages staff can see that shows them the Hubs that were published for the contest each day. (It's similar to an Excel spreadsheet.) This report is used to choose the daily winners. There is also a page where Simone can submit the nominees for the People's Choice contest each week. This page makes it easy for her to send emails to all of the nominees letting them know the good news! The contest voting actually takes place inside of a poll -- the same kind of poll that you might add to one of your Hubs.
What is different about So You Think You Can Write Online when compared to HubPages' last contest, Money Grows on Hubs, from a technical standpoint?
One difference is that the new contest appears on EVERY topic page (all 5,631 of them), instead of just one. Another difference is that there aren't any special daily topics.
The good news is that we will be introducing a new feature with this contest. There will be a special page listing all of the entries for the contest. This way, you can be sure that your own entries are being recognized. You can easily check out your fellow Hubbers' entries as well.
Contests aside, what else have you been working on for HubPages recently?
The HubPages Ad Program! I've worked on little else since the New Year, although I am finding more time for other things lately. I was the lucky soul who got to build all of the tax forms for the HubPages Ad Program. It was not the most fun I've ever had, but it had to be done! I also wrote the code that pays authors through PayPal each month.
Finally, a fun question - if you were to enter any sort of contest (pretend or real), what would it be?
Last year, former HubPages engineer Larry Freeman participated in the hackathon at the TechCrunch DISRUPT conference here in San Francisco. The hackathon is a contest where you have 24 hours to code a project or app from start to finish. Usually, people stay up all night working on their projects. I stopped by to see Larry present his iPhone app to the audience, which was fun. I suppose that if I were to enter a contest, it would be something like that. I really don't function well with no sleep, though, so it would take a lot of convincing for me to actually do it.
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