Show Notes

• Host: Dan Hugo


• Summary: There are various challenges that happen at scale, with prizes and one-shot project focus, maybe even a hackathon. Could this be the path to building innovation culture in Greater Vegas?

Hackathons and Projects Today

• We already do these, don´t we? Well, nobody shows up…


• Our projects are ongoing community elevation projects intended up improve our communities and develop job skills like project participation, ideation, collaboration…


• If nobody participates, how can we guess at the health of our local innovator population size? Our innovation culture health?

How about bribes?

• As has been asked now and then, “Is there free food?” Motivation comes from empty stomachs perhaps, but without participation there are no sponsors, without sponsors there is no free food, without free food there is no participation. A vicious circle.


• Challenge events tend to have judges and prizes. With sponsors, there might even be schwag and snacks. Bribery, can it work?


• We do face a bootstrap problem. Getting people to sign up for the first Challenge in this new paradigm, the 2023 NASA International Space Apps Challenge, has been slow going, but we are kicking this off on a moving train. Fingers crossed.

Challenges vs Civic Volunteer Projects

• Given the very thin (zero) participation in our Civic Volunteer projects, can focus on specific challenges, some high profile, bring nascent innovators onto the field?


• One the appetite for innovation is whetted, will there be some interest in volunteering for ongoing community elevation projects such as those Innovate for Vegas Foundation is focused upon, and all they entail?


• A single, focused challenge project may be an easier onramp to innovation outside the box, so to speak, ideally this will continue with the best kind of recidivism, and perhaps lead to participation in yet more projects, ongoing and otherwise. Everybody wins.

Planned Challengers Features

• Recognition of participation and achievement for posterity (no fleeting Instagram record)


• A portal of event information, whether current, upcoming, or historical


• A Collaborator (the new terms for Sponsors and Partners) platform for logos and mentions of thanks for support and everything else that goes along with actually supporting local innovation


• Open Source, of course, with Innovate for Vegas Foundation as facilitator and fiscal sponsor, which means all of the upsides of supporting a nonprofit 501(c)(3) public charity.