I am one of those bizarre hobbyists known as geocachers. I (and I don't know how many thousands of others) received an email notification about the challenge yesterday. Otherwise, I never would have known about it. It is not driven by cash, since all proceeds, plus an additional $10K will be donated to charity in the event of a win. But I challenge anyone to find a larger, more obsessed, more challenge-motivated group of individuals than geocachers. AND they have the added advantage of covering large swaths of the challenging, less-populated areas of Middle America. I think it would be a tremendous statement if we could bring in 9-10 of the balloons. I'm crossing my fingers (and going out to check out my small town).

The website is http://www.10balloonies.com/

Please post your thoughts on the results of the contest (when known). I'd love to see how this is analyzed as a means of large-scale, rapid cooperation.

Enjoy the day.

So your solution is a pyramid scheme? It still relies on your team winning the whole thing, which makes it like a lottery, which means your team will get only the tips that every other team gets.

Oh, and did you pass this by your human subjects review board?

Find all the information about our approach at
http://balloon.media.mit.edu/

THANK YOU AND… GOOD LUCK!

The MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team

My first thought on hearing about the challenge was that an ARG would be the best solution. People just need another fun reason to go on an adventure, but driving around aimlessly looking for 10 red balloons isn't much fun. The problem is that DARPA hasn't given enough time to organize such a thing. If they re-up the challenge with a longer lead time I'd be interested in working on such a thing.

Since I'm an entrepreneur – I know the surest way to kill creativity is to throw money at a problem – if it were that easy money would have solved all our problems long ago.

The reality is that it takes more to come up with the "right" creative solution. That more depends on what non-monetary factors and resources you have to marshal. For example, many folks on many postings keep mentioning Fedex/UPS – how much press do you think Fedex/ UPS would receive if its aid helped the winning team? I'm certain that it would be worth much more than a multimillion dollar ad campaign in creating awareness. But Fedex/UPS are probably not looking for awareness but action based on their ability to help businesses accomplish their goals. For this reason, organizations such as these plus due to their many layers of decision making process would make their aid unlikely.

Instead it needs to be something else where the motivational factors can align. I'm very much interested in seeing the approach the winning team takes.

The fact is, most of the good information about this is likely to come from people who are *not* looking for balloons. No one knows about the DARPA challenge, and no one (relatively speaking) will be going to your website to sign up to spot.

The fact is, there are about 10 teams who have the exact same website that you have. They're all offering cash for tips, cash for verification. And they're all contingent on winning. Which means if I've got a tip, I'm going to report it to every team I can find. There's no loyalty, because the chance of any one team winning is so low. That's what happens when you try to use cash as an incentive – you're treating it like a market, and so will the tipsters.

So far I'm truly disappointed in the creativity of the teams working on this. Even if motivating with cash were a good idea, it gets much worse when there are 15 teams doing the exact same thing. I haven't seen one team partnering with organizations (Fedex, USPS, truckers, etc.), making charitable donations, creating a game, or adopting any other interesting strategies that have a chance of success. Has anyone heard of a team doing this stuff that I haven't seen? Please share!

You're point are good but not totally accurate – there are a few different incentives that need to be laid out.

1.) Spreading the word

No team is going to win without spreading the word and having as many people as possible know that they should be on the lookout for Red Balloons. This, I agree, is not motivated by money but instead by social proof.. i.e. it's fun to play the balloon game.

2.) Having people come to you with the information

This is where the prize money is necessary. The cash isn't to get people out there looking to report the balloons, the cash is to get people to come back to you and tell you where the balloon is at. The cash acts as a reporting incentive (and other teams are offering cash so you have to offer a bounty to be considered for the information).

3.) Protection from counterintelligence

Also where cash comes into play – you need people to confirm if a balloon is actually in the location it's supposed to be. That's what the spotters are for, confirmation.

We're doing this among other things at RedBalloonRace.com

I agree, 10 balloons is almost impossible to find.. but you only really need 5…