In late December
DARPA or the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency held a challenge to help mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet (it was they who, incidentally,
did actually invent the Internet).
The agency launched, simultaneously, 10 tethered large weather balloons around the US and set out this challenge: the first person or team to ID all the locations would win a $40K prize. Specifically DARPA wanted to see how social networking could be used to accomplish a "large-scale, time-critical task."
Not so surprisingly a team from MIT won it.
Get this: in fewer than
9 hours after DARPA deployed the balloons.
How did they do it?
Well, their team created a
site (of course) and then promised "$2000 per balloon to the first person to send us the
correct coordinates, but that's not all -- we're also giving $1000 to
the person who invited them. Then we're giving $500 whoever invited the
inviter, and $250 to whoever invited them, and so on..."
People communicated the locations to the MIT team and the team verified the locations.
A huge challenge in this process? False balloons and erroneous reports by sneaky opponents.
Here's a line from the team's FAQ on their site:
How do you rule out the dishonest reports of spotting the balloons?
This is one of the most interesting parts to the challenge! We will
use sophisticated algorithms from the field of network science and
complex systems theories along with machine learning algorithms to
identify valid submissions.
When I was listening to
Riley Crane from MIT talk about this study on the radio, the host asked him if this contest was held so DARPA could better locate terrorists, bad guys, etc. But Riley, and DARPA, pointed out the contest was held to better investigate the role of "wide-area team building, and urgent mobilization required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems." Think along the lines of natural disasters, missing hikers, floating balloons with supposed children in them, etc.
Marketing Manager
Harish Kotadia's blog had some interesting points about the contest and what it means to folks working in Social Media Marketing.
One of these being, instead of DARPA hiring a group Social Media Pros and getting together and endlessly discussing how to accomplish how Social Networking can accomplish a large-scale task, they "designed a simple, low cost experiment... (which is) more cost-effective compared to time and travel cost of personnel figuring this out."
True. The prize was $40K for this, plus putting together a site and a team. Most likely far less expensive than flying in the Pros (then taking them to dinner, putting them up in hotels, giving them coffee, etc.)
The second, "it is important to reward not only (the) individual member for their winning contribution, but also those who brought them to the network, thereby extending (the) reach of (the) network and making Crowdsourcing a reality."
That second point reminded me of (not to plug too much here, but it's on my mind since I'm creating training around it for the company) the
Rewards Program that we have.
Essentially, any Talent already working with Aquent can tell us about another person (or job opportunity) and is given points for the referral, which can then be cashed in. In the case of a Talent they've referred, the Referrer automatically gets points for the referral. Then, if that person interviews with us, more points. If that person actually gets a job through us, points accumulate
every hour that person works (up to a certain number). So essentially a reward is given for just suggesting someone, but the reward is much, much greater if that referral is stellar. (The reward for the referred is obviously getting a gig.) The whole idea is based around the thought that we consistently get our best Talent as referrals from Talent we're already working with, so rewarding for that makes good sense.
I have no idea who came up with the program, but my hat is off to them, because it's seems close to what DARPA is thinking.
Not that I always agree with the military.
Any other thoughts from your social media folks out there and the applications of this in your field?
I'd Tweet this, but I'm pretty sure this is over 140 characters.
(image from
DARPA Website)
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