[lb1lf]

At a former employer, we had a Megabuck Club scoreboard; you got your name, photo and a quick outline of what your (very expensive!) mistake had been posted on it. Terrific idea, as:

a) The culture was very forgiving of honest mistakes; they were seen as a learning opportunity.

b) Posting a synopsis of your cockup made it easier for others to avoid the same mistake while we were busy making sure it would be impossible to repeat it in the future; also, it got us thinking of other, related failure modes.

c) My oh my was it entertaining! Pretty much the very definition of edutainment, methinks.

My only gripe with it was that I never made the honor roll...

[kls]

We had something similar at one of my jobs, its hard to relay it in text but it was really a fun thing. Mind you this is at a fortune 100 company and the CIO would come down for the ceremony when we did it, to pass the award. We called it the build breakers award and we had a huge trophy made up at a local shop, with a toilet bowl on it. If you broke the build and took down other developers then the passing of the award ceremony was initiated, I would ping the CIO (as it was my dev shop) he would come down, and do a whole sarcastic speech about how the wasted money was all worth it because the developers got some screw off time, while the breaker fixed the build. It was all in good spirit though and people could not wait to get that trophy off their desk, it helped that the thing was probably as big as the Stanley cup.

[lb1lf]

We built actual, physical thingamajigs; 'breaking a build' more often than not meant fragments of steel whizzing around the workshop while we were all getting doused in hydraulic fluid for our trouble.

Note to self: be very careful using Ziegler-Nichols to tune multi-kHp-systems. Very careful. Cough.