Next SocialGov Summit: Challenge and Prize Competitions

A public prize spurred Charles Lindbergh to fly across the Atlantic, and this week social media managers across government will help a new generation of prize competitions take flight. These sessions aren’t just for social media managers who have held a challenge or are planning one — they are for any social media manager who wants to learn how strategy and performance analysis can be used to support emerging technology programs within their agencies.

Challenge and prize competitions are a new path that federal agencies take to drive innovation and solve mission-centric problems, by posing a problem or question to the public and encouraging “solvers” to respond and submit solutions. The Federal Socialgov Community is coming together this Thursday to develop better strategies that all agencies can use to support the full life-cycle of these emerging technology programs.

The next SocialGov Summit on Prizes and Competitions, will be held at 9:30am Nov. 21 at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library Dream Lab.

Participants are invited to come and work hands-on to research and develop tools and resources teams need to better design, implement, market, and follow-up on their challenge programs. Lessons will include community building and retention, partnerships, communications and performance measurement. Sign up today with DigitalGov University to register and receive pre-event materials.

On-hand will be the Challenge.gov team, who helped support more than 260 federal competitions since 2010. After hosting all of those competitions, though, they learned that in order to make them successful, social media managers need to support the process, so agencies can use the power of social media to bring communities together for better solutions.

We’re also hosting a second event this week, on Tuesday, which will help you prepare for the workhop: “Challenge.gov: What Drives Competitors.” During this free session Jin Paik, Director of Project and Research Development at the Harvard-NASA Tournament Lab, will discuss:

• Results of empirical research on the motivations of competitors entering prize competitions

• A better perspective on how to shape your challenges in a way that is enticing to entrants

• Ways to resonate with your target audiences

Also, the we recently featured a post “Key to Successful Prize Competitions: Define your Problem Statement,” highlighting how failing to properly define your problem up front can result in lower participation and submissions that don’t actually solve your issue.

We hope to see you there.