Quim politely declined to make one available directly (and I understand), but proposed I ask the council if an N9 could be allocated from the contest pool for this.
fwiw I'm discussing device seeding activities with the Maemo/MeeGo community at the maemo.org Community list. That includes not only a code competition but also 'community awards' for other contributors profiles e.g. testers, helpful forum contributors, etc. I rather focus all the N9 activity in that context. You proposal is interesting but opens the door to many similar requests and (at least from the N9 side) I don't see us handling that. Then again, if you want to direct this proposal to the Maemo community (council), we will basically allocate an amount of devices for them to decide.