[open-government] How to make apps contests more sustainable?

Sat Nov 3 21:00:34 UTC 2012

This is a really interesting question. On one level, it has rarely
surprised me that hackathons rarely create tools which are long lasting.
Even the winning entries at any hack weekend have usually had ~two days of
intense work; this isn't dissimilar to the prototypes and concepts which
are created by many developers in their spare time, or "20%" time for
innovation at work. These are often understandably rough :)

To create something sustainable, though, needs a lot more effort. A
sustainable app meets a need - this implies a user group which may not be
developers or those present at a hack weekend (or perhaps the usage
scenarios are in another situation, so it's hard to really test during the
competition).  It needs a robust architecture - good UI design, solid
technical infrastructure so that it scales and runs reliably. It needs to
be presented or marketed to whomever will value it, and in most cases it
needs some sort of model by which money flows back to the
developer/hoster/etc.  To create that kind of tool usually needs a mix of
skills which are still very rare at app competitions, and serious thought
in some cases, beyond what's possible in a weekend.

A second challenge is that even the best apps from hack weekends tend to
get neglected once their creators go back to daily work or study. I'm
guilty of that myself :/  Even promising concepts on a Sunday afternoon are
quickly forgotten when you're back at the daily grind on a Monday, with no
more significant free time for a while. You do a bit of polishing and maybe
a blog post, but the next stage of development is hard... and so often
doesn't happen.

My sense is that it's unrealistic to view app competitions as more than a
prototyping exercise. The question is how to take forward the best
prototypes - with the people who created them or with new teams
potentially. In open innovation practice, it's not uncommon for idea
creators at the very start of the innovation pipeline not to be involved at
later stages of product development, and if that was culturally acceptable
here, that might be a way forward. A prototype is created, wins an app
competition, and then there's some support structure for, say, a government
or public sector innovation body or some other organisation to take the
idea forward, refine it, polish it, make it robust, come up with a support
model, user test, etc, and - assuming it still seems a good idea - then
ship it.

If the goal is strong innovation which makes it through into sustainable
systems, perhaps we need to look beyond app competitions and at other forms
of innovation support. Prize competitions, partnerships, mentoring - things
which will help great ideas emerge, be evaluated, enhanced and then
supported long term. (Another challenge in public sector innovation is
not-invented-here syndrome, and thinking up front about how new tech
systems and tools can be institutionalised or at least part of an
acceptable ecosystem could be useful.  There's no point in creating a great
new tool, only to have it fade away because there's no sound business model
for it to be in the private sector, and the public sector has no idea how
to work with it.)  Such support structures will also help avoid the
perception of some app competitions as a good way to get some free
development time, which can feel quite exploitative.

A fascinating topic - I'll be interested to see what comes out of it!

Laura

On 1 November 2012 08:29, Antti Jogi Poikola <antti.poikola at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hello,
>
> By now we’ve seen many apps contests, in many forms, all around world. In
> a way, this continuous sprawl is a success in itself. On the other hand,
> critique [1] related to the lack of sustainability of the apps contests is
> growing. There is a demand and a need to learn from each other and design
> better and more sustainable models for boosting the innovation around open
> data.
>
> If you are interested in making better apps contests or have other new
> ideas on how to boost the innovation around open data – feel free to join
> the discussion at the appsforx -email list [2]. The list was established
> after a international Apps Contest Organizers meetup which was organized
> during the Open Knowledge Festival 2012 in Helsinki (see also the meeting
> memo [3]).
>
> Right now I am compiling a topic report with working title: “Innovation
> Contests for Open Data Re-use”. I would appreciate all help in populating
> the listing of Apps contests [4], you can add missing details directly to
> the Google spreadsheet or share this email and the blogpost link [5] to
> relevant forums and people who might know about other apps contests.
>
> Best regards,
> Antti Poikola (Apps for Finland coordinator 2009)
>
> [1]
> http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/08/app-contests-sustainability-usability.html
> [2] http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/appsforx
> [3] http://okfestival.okfnpad.org/apps
> [4] http://bit.ly/apps_contests_list
> [5] http://poikola.fi/apps-contests-everywhere/
>
> --
> +358 44 337 5439
> about.me/apoikola
>
>
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