

American Energy Data Challenge - ceworthington
http://energychallenge.energy.gov

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nostromo
First thought: omg awesome!

Second thought: wait, is this just an essay contest?

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kylelibra
Getting paid for an idea? It's every MBAs dream come true!

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ceworthington
This is the first of four contests that will run throughout the coming year.
Contest #2, scheduled for Jan - March, is going to ask for functioning apps /
prototypes that address an idea surfaced in part #1 (with larger prizes).
Contest #3 will be a design and visualization challenge.

The goal was to engage a broad community (read: MBAs :-) ... but also energy
professionals/researchers that can't necessarily code). But we're hoping to
fire up the dev/designer community in Contests #2-4. We've already seen some
awesome ideas submitted, so we're hoping this model works well.

Source: I'm currently an Innovation Fellow detailed to the Department of
Energy working on Open Data. Hope you all submit an idea!

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powertower
Seriously, even if no real or scalable solutions are ever provided, the
government should hand out 10s of 1000s of business challenges and prizes
every year... By having every government department list it's internal data
and issues.

Your job would be to improve the processes, and/or solve the issues.

It wouldn't cost that much (the price of healthcare.gov website + a couple of
F-35 Joint Strike Fighters), and would gear the nation towards
entrepreneurship, a specialists workforce (not a replaceable unit workforce),
and growth of startups.

And it would make the gov seem more rational and human.

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ceworthington
Some of my Innovation Fellow colleagues at GSA are trying to do just that:
making it easier for modern, small web development shops to apply for
government IT contracts.

Check it out: [https://rfpez.sba.gov/](https://rfpez.sba.gov/)

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USNetizen
I'm getting a ton of errors trying to register for RFPEZ. Everything from
timeouts to 500 server errors. Feels like the Healthcare.gov issue all over
again.

Also, why would one need to "provide a link to an image of your best work"?
That seems very contrary to the point of procurement - especially given that
so little of the opportunities are for actual design work. Furthermore, how
does one link to work performed on an intranet, etc. (as most government work
is)?

Seems like it needs to be thought out a little better. Is the "best work" link
part of the selection criteria? How does this work with FAR requirements or
simplify the RFP/RFQ process?

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ceworthington
Hey USNetizen: want to email rfpez@gsa.gov with some of your issues? The team
is good, but very small and I know they would love your feedback.

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smithzvk
I like how a 24 character password is automatically insecure, while a 16
character one is not... dumb password validation...

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ceworthington
Yeah, sorry about that. You have to pick your battles in gov IT.

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Ixiaus
The company I work for, [http://energycurb.com](http://energycurb.com), has a
home energy analytics product that might be able to compete in this.

We aren't doing anything with public data but this is giving me some good
ideas.

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jebblue
Nice idea but the pay isn't high enough to get my ideas.

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mrcactu5
interesting older guy in the youtube video

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jsnk
"The Contest is open only to: (a) citizens or permanent residents of the
United States"

If you are a foreign hacker in US on TN or H1B or something like that, don't
bother.

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evadne
> and (b) private entities, such as corporations or other organizations, that
> are incorporated in and maintain a primary place of business in the United
> States.

That’s not hard.

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gavingmiller
Hijacking the topic - I'm co-founder of a startup called PetroFeed[1] that's
building a GitHub-esque platform for the Oil & Gas industry. We've raised
$3.1M, have 7 team members currently, and are moving out of closed beta by the
end of the week. If you're a Rails dev interested in this area, I'd love to
chat with you!

[1]
[https://www.petrofeed.com/company/careers](https://www.petrofeed.com/company/careers)

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angersock
You nonironically use "#hardproblems" in your opening paragraph on that page.

Go clutter up the next "Who's hiring" thread.

Edit: the little robot is adorable, though.

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VladRussian2
the staff photo is like a photo of septuplets.

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lowkeykiwi
in pyjamas.

