Ubivis: I quit playing that game after I saw, that everyone around me never started to play. The Game had become boring to quickly :(
I wish I could say the same... I ended up rather in the middle/centre of the galaxy and thus couldn't get many a star for myself and even had neighbours trying to invade me in day two. Neighbours that, judging from fleet movement are active most the time (given a near instant reaction to own fleet launches). :/
Ubivis: What kind of Contest it will have, no idea yet, but we still have 9 months to go ;)
Might need a considerable preparation phase for some sort of contest though, especially if you want to hold tournaments of any kind (which are the funniest sorts of contest in my eyes, as they somewhat get the community closer together) :p
Ubivis: The Calendar itself will be quite easy to code... HTML 5 is really handy for this ;)
Ah, I thought you were going for a bit more of a dynamic, interactive approach.