In this challenge, participants are tasked with finding 10 red weather balloons distributed throughout the continental US for 8 hours on December 5. The idea is to get this to be a crowdsourcing kind of activity, where people will use social media tools to solve this problem.

Our group, the MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team at http://balloon.mit.edu/bloggers, based out of the MIT Media Lab, has created a system where you get money not just for finding balloons, but for getting people to join the hunt who find the balloons, or for getting people who get people who find balloons, etc. Here’s an image of the structure:

First you have to sign up, which you can do here. Then you can send invitations to others to join through your own unique URL, crediting you with recruiting them.

While our team is interested in winning the contest, we are also interested in studying information diffusion in social networks. Does Twitter spread information faster than blogs? Is your blog effective at spreading information?

Once you sign up, you can track you impact using a link such as
http://balloon.mit.edu/YOUR_USERNAME/followers

and you can spread your influence using a link such as
http://balloon.mit.edu/YOUR_USERNAME/

We could use your help in getting out the word. If you sign up and blog about us you will be able to see the impact that your blog has on getting out the word in real time.

Win money, help science, and help charity!

Kind regards,

The MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team

REPLY: Oh yeah forgot all about that. Seems small in comparison to current events – A

99 red ballons tell a story of 99 balloons floating into the air, triggering an apocalyptic overreaction by military forces.

Funny how anything “floating” in the air can trigger an apocalyptic overreaction…

One of my shipmates when I was in the Navy told me the story when he was stationed at Adak on the radiosonde team he and his buddy got bored and decided to have some fun. One night they inflated a pibal just enough so it would float about thirty feet in the air and the put a chem lite in it so it glowed an eerie green. It was a windy, foggy, rainy night and when they released the balloon it blew towards one of the higher security areas of the base the marines were responsible for. My friend said that the whole marine detachment went on full alert because no one could figure out what the green glowing bobbing object was. He said he was lucky the balloon blew out to sea and no evidence was found to connect it to him.

* Someone to manage email campaigns
* Someone to manage ad buys to increase traffic to this site
* Someone to help find organizations interested in endorsing this site
* Someone to build program to manage hunts on the big day
* Someone to help improve this site
* Someone to help port this site to Amazon cloud
* Someone to help build program for collecting anr verifying responses

Same for DSO, ITPO, Microsystems technology office, Strategic Technology office and Tactical Technology office

Applying the well established social principle of bureaucratic inertia, I hypothesize that the probability of balloons being tethered by DARPA personnel will be inversely proportional to the distance from this location.

Another location:
Executive Conference Center
3601 Wilson Blvd, Suite 600
Arlington , Virginia 22203

For DARPA Events in December, note:
Mid-Atlantic SBIR/STTR Conference, November 30 – December 2, 2009 in Waterfront Place Hotel, Morgantown, West Virginia.

DMC 2009 November 30 – December 3, 2009 at Hilton Orlando in Orlando, Florida.

Can anyone find other addresses for DARPA personnel?

Funny how anything “floating” in the air can trigger an apocalyptic overreaction…