Hawaiʻi's Technology Community
TechHui Meta Contest
Aloha TechHuians. As part of our initiative to grow the TechHui community, we are announcing what is, to our knowledge, the world's first meta-contest. This is a contest to come up with a clever contest :-) The winner of the meta-contest will have their choice of two months of free top level sponsorship (see the Sponsors area to the right) on the TechHui site, a $998 value, or the new 16GB iPod nano.
The Rules 1) You must be a member of TechHui. 2) The contest you propose must relate to science or technology. 3) Employees and contractors of TechHui's sponsors are not eligible. 4) The contest cannot be oriented toward promotion of a company, product or service. 5) The contest must only be open to members of TechHui. 6) Submissions must be made as responses to this blog post received on or before February 1st, 2010 (midnight HST is the cutoff) Any other form of submission will not be accepted. Entries will be judged by a panel of five judges put together by the TechHui team. The criteria with be creativity and expected efficacy in increasing membership. TechHui reserves the right to exclude entries, at its discretion, for any reason, including the expected cost and complexity of the entry's implementation.
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Comment by Daniel Leuck on December 21, 2009 at 4:19pm
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Its great to see all these solid entries coming in! Competition++.
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Comment by Truman Leung on December 20, 2009 at 3:59pm
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Create a mash-up of pre-existing free or low cost web services that acts as a website (or rather a section of a website) to help a nonprofit accomplish a single well-defined goal. The contest should also require a DIY how-to blog post on TechHui detailing how anyone could similarly create a solution for $100 or less. For example, someone could create a website to help Curtis Kropar maintain an "organic" list of computer parts currently needed and write a blog post on how they did it.
The solution to help a non-profit should not require any coding so that any non-profit volunteer could implement it without specialized skills. Also, the solution should not be a complete website (as many nonprofits already have an existing site) but it rather a separately hosted webpage linked to from their website's navigation menu, "skinned" to seamlessly look like a section their website.
TechHui can send out invitations to nonprofits to ask them what kind of website functionality they could benefit from in a contest like this. The list of nonprofits and their requirements can be posted on the contest info page. Contestants can choose from the published list of nonprofits to help or find a nonprofit of their own to help.
Benefits:
1. can help nonprofits
2. develop a library of useful DIY blogs posts on TechHui to improve TechHui's SEO for years to come
3. generate publicity for TechHui (techies helping others ... good storyline for a reporter?)
4. give any tech-oriented person (not just coders) an opportunity to participate in the contest.
5. nonprofits have large membership networks which they will probably use to publicize the contest, thereby getting more publicity/membership for TechHui
6. this would be a great project for high school or college courses or home schoolers (maybe you could have a special contest division just for high school aged kids)
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Comment by Gabe Morris on December 20, 2009 at 2:54am
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As a way of easing the implementation of the idea, instead of holding a full-fledged contest for a fully-baked application (with all the prizes and cooperative agreements that would entail, in addition to the actual work put in by teams), perhaps the contest could simply be for ideas about the data and services local government should make available.
So instead of: http://www.nycbigapps.com/application-gallery
Just this: http://insights.appsfordemocracy.org/pages/22069-nyc-big-apps-ideas
Admittedly, for this contest to be most effective and gain the publicity that is needed to attract new members to TechHui, it might be best to make it open to the public at large (if not for submitting ideas, then at least to vote).
Also, the Digg-like system would mean the judging is taken out of the hands of the TechHui organizers. So you could simply change the judging system so that people submit ideas but the TechHui team does the judging. Or you can (see parenthetical comment below), have both a judges award and a people's choice award.
(correction to my initial post below - NYC uses a Digg-like system for their contest to select the winner of a People's Choice Award, which is separate from the formal winner that is selected by a team of judges.)
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The state budget crisis (Furlough Fridays et. al.) is the hot topic in the local news nowadays. But where there's a crisis, there's also a ....
Other states and municipalities have held contests for applications that facilitate the delivery of government services and information.
See http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/ for the original contest held for the district of Washington, DC.
See http://www.sunlightlabs.com/contests/appsforamerica/ for the national contest.
And see http://www.nycbigapps.com/ for the NYC edition, which seems to have incorporated a Digg-like voting mechanism as the way of determining the contest's winners.
So the contest is, organized under the banner of TechHui - and working in concert with local government - institute one of these app contests for Honolulu/Hawaii.
One of the tricks would be to come up with government/business/foundation support for prizes for the winner. NYC included non-cash incentives such as lunch with the mayor. If it's to hard to raise cold cash to give to the winner, perhaps local businesses (e.g., Hawaiian Airlines, hotel groups) could offer up non-cash prizes that are still lucrative in their own right.
Overall, the contest would be great publicity for TechHui - and generating new members would simply be the exhaust by-product of also doing good.
Admittedly, this contest is not a simple thing to implement.
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Comment by Gus Higuera on December 18, 2009 at 1:32pm
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Love the Rick Roll idea =)
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Comment by Ryan on December 17, 2009 at 9:10am
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Local Style Rick Roll. Come up with a funny, but Hawaii-specific, equivalent to the "Rick Roll." Extra points for something completely original, rather than borrowing something from Rap Reiplinger. Create a YouTube video of anything you like -- a fake newscast, a dumb stunt, a birthday party -- and interrupt it Rick Astley-style. Video should ultimately plug TechHui in some way, and hopefully a clever way.
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Comment by Dave Zuls on December 16, 2009 at 8:50am
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Create an online invitation form for preexisting members to fill out. Members will use the form to send an email membership invitation to a prospective new member. The email will direct the nominee to a personalized, online membership form.
Similar to this form - but with an extra field for a personalized message:
http://www.ascedrive.org/ReferColleagues.cfm
New members are tracked back to the referring member via encoded URL or some other tracking method in the sign-up link that is sent to the prospective new member.
Provide a science or technology related prize to the member who is credited with the most conversions as well as to one new member chosen at random who signs up between specific date ranges.
Maybe the science or technology prize could be donated by a local company that wants to generate some extra buzz around the product or service. Maybe the name of the contest could be worded to help promote the folks providing the prize or the product name.
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Comment by Cameron Souza on December 15, 2009 at 10:25pm
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Best OpenSocial app? They could be posted to TechHui.
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Great ideas! Keep them coming folks.
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Comment by GB Hajim on December 15, 2009 at 2:04pm
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Contest Idea #3
Tech Hui Comic Book / Graphic Novel Cover
If Tech Hui was a comic book or graphic novel, what would it look like?
Cover will be judged on the following criteria
1. Capture the spirit of techies and Tech Hui in particular
2. Has a tropical tech feel
3. Incorporates a nemesis.
4. Gratuitous use of bulging muscles, generous bosoms and bulges get extra points.
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