Outside of the standard judging, voting, and winner announcement stages, there are other ways to make your challenge stand out to potential competitors and incorporate different elements into it. Here are a few examples:
- Multiple phases - start off with an ideation phase that allows anyone to submit their ideas or solutions to your problem. From there, select the top 10 or 20 (depending on how many you receive in the first round) to move on to a 2nd phase to develop their proposal further. You can stop there and award winners after the 2nd phase, or you can even have a 3rd phase where you select an even smaller group of finalists (e.g the top 5) to build a prototype or prove their solution works in some other way.
- First to finish - similar to a hackathon but can be used for less technical challenges, and wouldn’t require a rented out space. Competitors would work on the challenge until the first successful individual/team reaches the solution that meets the judging criteria.
- Hackathon - if you have a more tech-related challenge and the funding to rent out the space, you may choose to hold a hackathon to determine your winner. A hackathon is where all of your competitors would gather in the same room and work on the challenge goal. Individuals or teams would work on it until someone reaches a solution and meets the judging criteria.
- Leaderboard updates - if your challenge is requiring competitors to reach a certain threshold, you can periodically update the page with who is in the lead. If you have a large list of competitors, it is best to limit it to the top 10. Otherwise, try to display all of the competitors’ standings as motivation to win. This can also encourage collaboration for those at the bottom of the board to join up with individuals or teams at the top.
If you run a challenge on HeroX, we are able to accommodate most of the above. Schedule time to chat with us today so we can help set your project for success.
