[Showme-devel] Fwd: Advice requested: Designing a open data analytics competition targeted to high school students

[Bernelle Verster]

Fyi

Will respond later.

B

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *Stefan Louw* <stefan at innovatesa.org>
Date: Wednesday, 18 November 2015
Subject: Advice requested: Designing a open data analytics competition
targeted to high school students
To: Bernelle Verster <bernellev at gmail.com>


Hi Bernelle

Apologies for the delayed response. I've been down with a viral infection
for the past two weeks.

It sounds like an exciting project!

Just to set expectations, we only run in-person offline competitions that
involve solving local problems mainly in township areas so our experience
may not be completely applicable.

We do have about 80 girls in our Code 4 Cape Town program that may well be
interested in participating.

I'd be happy to meet up if you'd like to pick my brain on certain aspects
of competition design for youth. Unfortunately I will have very little time
available for the rest of this year, so maybe we could rather do a quick
Skype call some time.

In terms of length of time, it really depends what you want to get out of
it. It can work well if marketing is your goal, but if you want more of a
learning experience for the participants I'd suggest longer. The key then
is just to keep them engaged.

Some other pointers that might help from our experience:

+ getting entrant can be the toughest part. Make sure you know your
'market' and what would entice them.
+ often the prize isn't the most important aspect - it's more about an
experience for the students where they are able to grow and meet new people.
+ having one prize can be a deterrent. Often multiple prizes has worked
better. Youth can be very sensitive to failure so if they feel like they've
'lost' that can be a knock to their confidence.
+ the size of the prizes is important. Too big and they will scare lots of
people off because they will feel like it's for experts.
+ be very clear on the competition process and rules.
+ try to make it as personal as possible - almost all advertising apart
from physically visiting schools has not worked for us.
+ have a good 'endgame' - make sure there are easy ways for the students to
get plugged into a community related to what you're promoting.

In terms of resources:

+ NESTA <http://www.nesta.org.uk/challenge-prizes> has a wealth of
resources on innovation, youth, challenges.
+ Gamification is a powerful method for designing competitions (as well as
many other things).  Ultimately it's understanding people's motivations so
that you can design a process that induces certain activities whilst making
them enjoyable. Here <http://yukaichou.com> is a good website on it, and
there's also a book you can download if you like.

Hope this helps!

Warm regards,
Stefan

On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 9:56 AM, Bernelle Verster <bernellev at gmail.com
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','bernellev at gmail.com');>> wrote:

> Hi Stefan
>
> Lauren Uppink suggested I contact you, and what a delight to learn
> about InnovateSA!
>
> We are designing a competition targeted at high school students,
> involving (Free and Open Source) software (Debian) and hardware.
>
> The ShowMeBox is a competition that uses software and open source
> hardware to visualize data relevant to the participants. It is
> designed to promote Debian and the art of open data analytics.
>
> We are currently working on the technical aspects of the competition,
> but I need input on how best to design the user-facing part of the
> competition, what the students will see, how they will interact with
> us, how we will reach them, what issues to consider, how best to pitch
> it to high school students, etc.
>
> We were thinking of having a long running competition, but the advice
> I have received so far is to have a short competition -no longer than
> one day.
>
> We hope to start the marketing of the competition before the end of
> the year, and we need the competition to end, with prize giving,
> during the international Debian Developers Conference held in Cape
> Town next year - DebConf16 - around 2 July 2016.
>
> We are at this stage considering about 300 entrants, but this is
> flexible either way.
>
> More information can be found here:
> https://wiki.debian.org/ShowMeBox
>
> Could you please let me know if you are willing to help, with an
> indication of costs (if any - we are all volunteers, but willing to
> commit funds to this to do it right), and if you can't assist, if you
> can recommend other people, or resources, books, websites...
>
> best regards
> Bernelle Verster (indiebio)
>
>


-- 
Stefan Louw
Innovate SA Director
084 945 6591

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