I have both good and negative feelings on the subject. The good feelings, come from the fact that I believe that people for the most part should be free to hel

I have both good and negative feelings on the subject. The good feelings, come from the fact that I believe that people for the most part should be free to help their peers as they want, it is part of nature to strengthen your group... Yet, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth, when circles that are supposed to be fair, and claim to be fair, aren't. It is specially bad when we are outside those circles... On my case there are two ones that are particularly striking: One, I am not related to the US startup scene at all, I did not went to Ivy League universities, or anything close, I don't know anyone at MIT, Stanford or have a friend in the whole city of San Francisco... This mean that getting investment is not easy... Some people might say: "Oh, but anyone can apply to Y Combinator or to a VC!" well, yes... You can apply, but if you read around, many times "social proof" is required, and what is social proof? Or the other case, is since I make games, I might want to compete for a award, yet brazillians mostly gave up on IGF, because most of IGF winners (and judges, and organizers) are somehow related to CMP itself (the organizer company) or Tig Source (a blog and forum ran by Derek Yu, winner and judge). But IGF one is not exactly new, every year people bash it because of that, and every year a flamewar ensues in several forums... And some ex-IGF judges and founders sent me e-mails claiming that this is the reason they are ex-IGF in first place.