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Rate our startup: Challenge.gov
- wicknicks 16y agoWow! Very ambitious and bold startup. People are solving more society problems than the Govt itself. Website like yours will help gather international teams to look at community problems. This is like taking Open Source Movement to the "hard" world. Wish you all the very best!
- ericz 16y agoGovernment startup? What a rare phrase
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- yummyfajitas 16y agoIn what way is this a "startup"? It looks more like thinly veiled advertising for the government than anything else. Some "challenges": "How Has Social Security Made a Difference in Your Life?" "Write about how you've used government information in your life and have your story posted on GovGab" Ignoring the most blatant propaganda, the rest are just feel-good projects of no consequence. On the front page, the only project that even pretends to be significant is "Connecting Kids To Coverage Challenge". Apparently there are 5 million children who have de facto health insurance, but are counted by the census as "uninsured". Your challenge is to change their census characterization by encouraging their parents to fill out some paperwork. It's obvious that our enlightened bureaucrats are unwilling to risk losing their jobs if a crowdsourced solution actually works better than they do (witness the backlash against, for instance, charter schools and vouchers). Why should we care that, as a purely propaganda move, the government is crowdsourcing the problem of teaching children how to become president?
- jrallison 16y agoOur startup is ChallengePost.com. Challenge.gov is the second site to use our platform.
- imp 16y agoThat wasn't clear from your title. Thanks for the clarification.
- poet 16y agoTough talk like that will win you cheap points, but you're just wasting peoples' time by taking a rushed and uninformed barf in the comment box. Let's examine your basic claim that: "[excluding the blatant propaganda, the projects] are just feel-good projects of no consequence". Here are some challenges featured on the front page: * An X prize for green cars with a prize pool of $10,000,000. Run by Progressive Insurance and the X Prize Foundation. * An X prize for green aerospace with a prize pool of $16,500,000. Run by NASA and the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency Foundation. It took me about 5 minutes to verify that you just cherry picked from the data to support your preconceived notions. I have absolutely no idea how you could have thought you were adding to the conversation.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoI didn't cherrypick, I just didn't search the entire site. I looked at the front page, "economy" and the first page of "education". I'm sorry my post didn't more clearly specify that.
- jbooth 16y agoSo, if we set aside all of the ideology about how if anything involves the word government, then we all need to jump on some kind of bandwagon.. If we set all of that aside, this looks like a decent idea, no? More engagement is what we need in this country. Ask not what your country can do for you and all of that.
- hugh3 16y agoMore engagement of what in what? I'd like to see less engagement of the government in everything. Why is the US Federal Government offering me twelve thousand dollars to come up with recipes? I hate to sound like one of those Ron Paul folks, but when did acting as a middleman for the procurement of recipes become a duty of the US Federal Government?
- jbooth 16y agoIf you hate to sound like one of those Ron Paul folks, don't say things like "I'd like to see less engagement of the government in everything". That doesn't make any sense. You're taking a whole bunch of big complicated problems, shrinking them to a single simplification that you can get your head around, and then prescribing one-size-fits-all solutions. That's never a good recipe. The Federal Government happens to be in a place where they can expend small money for big national gains in a number of places -- energy research in particular is one of those. Federally funded energy research just plain makes sense, especially when you compare it to all of the indirectly-federally-funded oil exploration that happens on a dollar for dollar basis. EDIT: For "what in what", I meant "people" in "solving the problems we have in this country".
- yummyfajitas 16y agoOne problem people have in this country: I'm hungry but too busy at work to cook. Some frenchies, mexicans and indians solved that for me [1]. Another problem: my stuff is in house A, but I want it in house B. Some Ukrainians solved that problem for me. I'm highly engaged in solving the problem of "you want to sell your stocks, but no one wants to buy them right now." While there are an unusually large number of people not doing this right now, it's mainly due to assorted frictions. Some of them don't know what problems need to be solved, or are not very good at solving the problems that currently need to be solved, or just live too far away to help. That's a problem, but it's really not clear how this site helps with it. It seems like a site such as monster.com would be more useful. [1] Temporarily, at least. My local city council is trying to shut them down.
- viggity 16y agoso how exactly does one go about procuring a .gov domain?
- sudonim 16y agoBuild a website for the government.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- loire280 16y agoThe startup is http://www.challengepost.com/ http://www.challengepost.com/ (the linked site uses their software/platform). This isn't the first government initiative to use their platform: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/us_government_taps_challengepost_to_help_launch_open_government_initiatives.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/us_government_taps_chal... They really should fix the post title, I was confused and had to look it up.
- sudonim 16y agoChallenge.gov is built on v2 of the platform which uses Rails 3. ChallengePost.com is still in PHP as is AppsForHealthKids.com, mentioned in the RRW article.
- cmars232 16y agoThis webpage has a redirect loop. The webpage at http://challenge.gov/ http://challenge.gov/ has resulted in too many redirects. Clearing your cookies for this site or allowing third-party cookies may fix the problem. If not, it is possibly a server configuration issue and not a problem with your computer.
- adamdecaf 16y ago"This webpage has a redirect loop. The webpage at http://challenge.gov/ http://challenge.gov/ has resulted in too many redirects. Clearing your cookies for this site or allowing third-party cookies may fix the problem. If not, it is possibly a server configuration issue and not a problem with your computer."
- jrallison 16y agoSorry about that. We'll get this fixed.
- credo 16y agoInteresting to see two (imo) extreme reactions - on one hand, the top-comment says "In what way is this a "startup"? It looks more like thinly veiled advertising for the government than anything else.". Another comment says "Wow! Very ambitious and bold startup. People are solving more society problems than the Govt itself." I'm in the middle. I do think that it is a startup (assuming that they're leveraging a common platform to build these sites) I also think that civic-oriented sites are a good idea and contribute to society (Of course, I'm biased because I build civic-software apps, though not for the government :) OTH I think it is an exaggeration to use this site as an example to say that "People are solving more society problems than the Govt itself". [edit] Just saw the reply that the site was built for free. Apologies for saying that I assumed that the govt outsourced this website to the contractor and that govt contracting is generally lucrative I think building the site for free is great for both sides. For your startup, it is great PR and will help win future clients. For the govt, it helps saves money for other work. Congratulations on building the site.
- sudonim 16y agoWe responded to a request for information and built it for free. ( original rfi: https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=bf7019eb2287a3516f1d16bb5e6328d2&tab=core&_cview=1 https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id... )
- davidu 16y agoI'd love to hear more about how you navigated this process. I had just assumed it was "impossible" unless you are Boeing or Halliburton.
- bmelton 16y agoRFIs are completely different than RFPs. RFIs have much less stringent requirements, and are usually (gasp) awarded to whomever can convince the government that their bid is the most capable or complete. RFPs are the scary ones, in which to even enter means you're competing with the likes of Boeing, Grumman, Halliburton, et al. Those are nigh impossible to win without serious inroads pre-existing.
- notmyname 16y agowhy are you trying to save db on my disk?
- ThomPete 16y agoInteresting. Do you have to be american to participate?
- sudonim 16y agoYou probably have to be an American to win - but not participate on the site. Each country has it's own laws governing contests, and there's no way (for a large organization) to open a contest to "everyone in the world" without getting lawyers from each country in the world to make amendments to the language. It's a shame. I ran a contest a few years ago and just ignored getting lawyers, so it was open to anyone. Had I known then what I know now, I probably wouldn't have run the contest. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.
- gorm 16y agoWhere is the source code?
- DrewHintz 16y agoWhere should we report security vulnerabilities in the site?
- euroclydon 16y agoNice site, but now the government has yet another entry point for grants.
- sudonim 16y agoActually, the site doesn't cover grants... just focused on challenges / contests for now.
- keltex 16y agoHow did you get a .gov domain?
- ataggart 16y agoUnless you need to legitimately initiate violence against others, it's not clear to me what "the government" brings to problem solving. A perpetual game of political whack-a-mole isn't my idea of progress.
- JangoSteve 16y agoNice. So ChallengePost, Inc. was founded January '08 [1], has Steve Wozniak as an advisor [2], already has a PageRank of 6/10 [3], and now has successfully launched a government site [OP]. At what point do you guys start considering yourselves a successful/promising company, no longer a "startup"? [1] http://appext9.dos.state.ny.us/corp_public/CORPSEARCH.ENTITY_INFORMATION?p_nameid=3617486&p_corpid=3616575&p_entity_name=challengepost&p_name_type=A&p_search_type=BEGINS&p_srch_results_page=0 http://appext9.dos.state.ny.us/corp_public/CORPSEARCH.ENTITY... [2] http://mixergy.com/challengepost-brandon-kessler/ http://mixergy.com/challengepost-brandon-kessler/ [3] http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php (you'll have to enter it yourself) EDIT: btw I'm no trying to detract from this aaccomplishment. This is pretty cool. Just a little confused as to what stage you guys are in.
- bkessler 16y agoHi, founded the corp in '08, closed tiny funding round in Nov '08 (when the global financial sky had fallen), launched live June 29 '09, got the federal gov 10 months later, had 2 employees until 2010, now have 5. True startup indeed...
- davidcann 16y agoI just heard a story about this on the PBS NewsHour podcast. It's a nice overview of the project! http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/09/gov20-kundra-chopra-challenge-dot-gov.html http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/09/gov20-kundra-cho...