Highlights from 2013 #TCOpen Coding Competition

Our team and a few other agencies had the chance to attend the 2013 TopCoder Open this year and meet the best of the best developers, coders, designers, data scientists, and innovative thinkers in crowdsourcing.

This is the #TCO13 highlight video.

Watch a few minutes and you’ll see the excitement of the competitors and why we at challenge.gov do what we do to encourage federal agencies to use competitions to engage the public in solving government’s technical, scientific and operational problems.

There is nothing that compares to meeting the real people who do this work. Especially those who have the interest and skills to lend to public service through challenge competitions.

One of the key factors for getting the best talent to play is to offer a truly competitive challenge:

• Something they won’t see in their day-to-day jobs
• An ask that makes people think out of the box and pushes their skill building to new limits
• An opportunity to provide solutions that would make their peers envious

In addition to prizes, benefits for the participants include exposure to tech companies and the potential for job offers. A number of top tech companies are looking out for that high level of expertise to bring into the fold from these types of events.

As you’re thinking about what challenge competitions you’ll run in 2014, consider the audience of potential solvers. What could you do to get them as excited about your challenge as the organizers did for participants at this event?