As you say, there's little work involved until you become a finalist. And if you become a finalist, I would think the minimum $5k + publicity is a good tradeof

As you say, there's little work involved until you become a finalist. And if you become a finalist, I would think the minimum $5k + publicity is a good tradeoff for the trip to Seattle. A couple of other contests (Adobe, Facebook) were ridiculous because entering the contest, not even winning it, required signing away significant control of your web app and letting the sponsors make derivative web apps.