Looks like a cool contest, I may check it out. What bothers me about modeling contests (I've taken part in several, it's my field) is they often reward putting 90% of your effort into extracting relatively small performance gains. For one thing it's not a realistic operating environment, there are usually many other factors more important than pure performance like upkeep, cost, speed, etc. This is why the netflix contest winning models couldn't go into production. The other issue I have is that people with other commitments (like a job) don't really stand a chance, it's usually very time-consuming to go from fifth place to first.