Comments on: Prizes Help You Get Noticed (a response to Kevin Starr)

By: HASH

HASH — Sun, 01 Sep 2013 04:05:23 +0000

@Carl by using a throw-away email you caused this comment to get caught in the spam filter, glad I found it.

You’ll note that I’m talking about smaller prizes, and how they’re most useful for getting recognized, and that’s what we used them for in that first 8 months at Ushahidi. Besides that I agree with Kevin on the competitions, so whether we took part in the Knight News Challenge a year later doesn’t change the points here – so not sure what you’re getting at actually.

_______

As an aside, while the Knight News Challenge does give out some awards upwards of $500k, most aren’t that large and we didn’t get that amount either as we were awarded $70k in 2009 and $240k in 2011. Interestingly, you’ll note that Kevin is also talking about winners who take away small amounts of money. For the 10 or so hours we put into the Knight News Challenge, I was fairly happy to get what we did get. So what’s the point here? In the prizes that have a larger amount of funds (let’s call that >$50k), if you win it’s worth the time. What Kevin’s getting at is that there are generally a lot of people who don’t win and then it’s a lot of wasted effort.

By: Carl

Carl — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 12:34:40 +0000

Actually, Ushahidi went on to compete in several other ‘competitions’ that aren’t mentioned. Ushahidi was the recipient of the News Challenge Award twice (2009 and 2011). The News Challenge itself is highly competitive, offering credibility and great deal of institutional support with funders), in addition to upwards of $500,000 in funding. Way more significant than $10,000. Ushahidi also received a Webby Award (also a competition) even though it doesn’t appear to come with a cash prize.

There are other awards Ushahidi has competed for, whether it was nominated, or actively applied for, that were also competitions. Some some of the conclusions drawn here don’t seem to match up with reality (at not least in regards to the early days of Ushahidi).

By: Alloysius Attah

Alloysius Attah — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 16:13:08 +0000

I share the same opinion after reading Kevin Starr’s article on Stanford Social Innovation Review.
Winning the App4frica Climate Change Competition with Farmerline gave us visibility and the confidence to take our product to market.We got funding from Indigo Trust later that year.
However I also think that in addition to awarding prizes to the winners of these competitions, organisations should also provide a dedicated mentorship framework to enable entrepreneur implement their ideas and stay away from competitions