Fumpetition.org is a hobby project started for fun, yet aiming beyond plain fun.

IMHO, at times things done for fun have higher chances of developing into something significant than if a serious goal had been pursued up front. Working on a serious project sets some constraints that may pose barriers to exploring all possibilities. Doing things for fun enables more freedom in a couple of ways:

• there are no deadlines and/or stakes
• failures are not painful (as long as we talk about achieving some kind of goals; surely enough, engaging in risky behaviour can still result in painful experience which is by no means fun)
• motivation is entirely sincere, decisions are always honest

Of course, there are downsides, too:

• less resources (time, money, etc) are available for fun projects
• absent a fixed objective, the focus of fun activity may drift uncontrollably; on the other hand, this is exactly why it may end up in a new unexplored territory full of opportunities for fascinating discoveries.

Fumpetition.org aspires to become a constant source of fun ideas to try, fun challenges to tackle and fun inventions (funventions?) to arrive at. At the same time, I expect that all that extra fun activity will generate some tangible by-products benefitting much broader audience.

An ideal outcome would be if Fumpetition.org triggers a fundamental technological breakthrough.

Why “fumpetition”?

“Fumpetition” is a portmanteau of fun and competition. You may argue that a straightforward blend of those two words should be funpetition. However the latter sounds more like a humorous petition. To counter that effect it was decided to take advantage of a rule whereby certain prefixes (such as “con-”, “in-”) adjust to better fit the letter that follows them:

• con- becomes col- before l: collaborate, collect, collide (and similarly for in-: illicit, illegal, illuminate);
• con- becomes com- before m, b, or p: communicate, combine, compose (and similarly for in-: immortal, imbalance, import);
• con- and in- turn cor- and ir- before r: correlation, correspond, irresponsible, irregular

Therefore, considering fun as a prefix, its union with petition gives birth to fumpetition.