Posts Tagged: contests

5 Awesome Government Contests

Buried, hopefully deeply, in my hometown newspaper archives, there’s a photograph of a dorky 8-year-old me whose mom dressed her funny. (To be fair, it was the 80s. We were all dressed funny.) In the photo I proudly and nervously showed off my award-winning anti-drunk driving poster of a drawing of a girl crying a single cartoonish blueRead… Read more »

Four Approaches to Crowdsourcing

Is this a Golden Age for citizen involvement in government? As dismayed as some may be with the political process, there are growing opportunities for meaningful engagement in many areas, thanks to growing social media tools and a willingness to participate by many ordinary people. Gavin Newscom is California’s lieutenant governor, and was formerly theRead… Read more »

Using Prizes as Innovation Engines

President Obama said he wanted to spur innovation, in his State of the Union address. Actually, this effort started in earnest last year through the use of prizes and contents as a complement to traditional research and development. As promised in an earlier blog post on this topic, the IBM Center now has a report,Read… Read more »

Want Lots of Responses to Your Contest? Think PR!

Alice Lipowicz of Federal Computer Week wrote an interesting article about different government contests going on – some very successful, some not so much: http://fcw.com/articles/2010/10/04/low-participation-ssa-contest-remedies.aspx?sc_lang=en I expect we’ll be seeing more of this trend, so if you’re planning to try this approach, I’d like to offer some advice on how to ensure your organization’s contestsRead… Read more »

New Gov 2.0 Radio: Mark Headd – Engaging App Developers with Gov’t Data

A discussion with Mark Headd, an app developer and former govie, about civic apps. Mark Headd explains Open311 and accessing government services and lowering costs using Twitter, and gives ideas on how to engage developers around government civic apps contests. Listen to internet radio with Gov20Radio on Blog Talk Radio

Rewarding Innovation In Government

Yesterday I read an article (http://fcw.com/articles/2010/03/09/white-house-prize-policy.aspx) by Doug Beizer that profiled the White House’s new policy on carrying out contests to spur innovation. I think it’s grand that the White House recognizes the power of using gaming and rewards mechanisms within an innovation setting; however, it challenges agencies to develop this with little direction asRead… Read more »