Yo Zein!
As you probably didn't know, I had wanted to start a Portal mapping competition not too long ago (in early December methinks ) for the Snarkpit as well. But before I did start, I wanted to be able to create a map on my own. Why? Well, I needed to fulfill a couple of empty caverns in my conscious. I needed to complete a small project (which is something I hadn't done in a while), I needed to begin working with the updated engine to get used to it, and also have confidence that I could put my new found efforts from studying game theory and design into practice. All this I felt needed to be addressed before I thought I was capable of hosting a Portal map competition. Well, thus far nothing has happened on the Portal competition for two reasons; they are good and bad: The good- I did complete a semi-long Portal map complete with custom content and enough game design principles and practices involved to satisfy myself worthy of creating a Portal map, I even felt confident enough to enter it into a competition over at thinkingwithportals.com where it won 3rd place. However (the bad part now-), the map had some inherent bugs that upon investigation, could not be "fixed" because the way the updated engine works. I'm told that a later release will allow me to fix this for my map, but I don't know when that will be. Regardless, the plan was to polish the map for a final release and get feedback for it here at the Snarkpit. But none of that would be possible until I could get those bugs fixed, because those bugs will mess-up the original game (which is really, really bad for people).
SO, I was planning to wait for the SDK update, fix the bug, release it and then start the competition so that I could feel confident enough to start on my own entry for it and not be a hypocritical host. The problem is: who knows when the next SDK update will be released? So it would seem that my ambitions for a competition to happen the way I wanted it to may not go through, and if you really want a competition started, I wouldn't mind taking the time to get one started (assuming there will be enough people to enter) as I do own web space that I will gladly upload the entry maps to and wouldn't mind updating rules and monitoring posts for what people want. It is something I actually enjoy doing. But if you have an idea about how a compo might run and want to do it yourself, then go for it. Just start a thread with an appropriate label with the rules posted, and you're off!
-Good luck!
-BTW, here's the map's profile here at the Pit: A Pl3sant Debut