REAL MILITARY REAL-TIME
SOCIAL NETWORKING GAME   

By:  N. Goodman    

The Military, Reality, Crowd Sourcing, Social Media, Real-time and Gaming, all-in-one program!  It’s all here, baby!  It’s really here!  And the name of the game is The DARPA Network Challenge. 

Yes, although they may have chosen a better name for this wicked-social bit-of-fun, the name does have huge hint of the potential excitement.

Let’s break it down.

First of all, DARPA stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and it’s located in the USA.

DARPA is the main research department for the Department of Defense.  It is the agency which directs and manages basic and applied research and development for the betterment and advancement of the military, its missions and traditional roles.

And it has issued an extremely interesting and fun-filled, social, reality game!  Only they phrase it more like “…To mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet, DARPA has announced the DARPA Network Challenge, a competition that will explore the roles the Internet and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team-building, and urgent mobilization required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems.”

They could use a little marketing…  If you add your own explicative, like Join In!  Come on and Spot Big Red!  It’s everywhere!  Win 40,000 dollars! You have the excitement many of us are already feeling.

One must admit that the idea of the military combining the ‘regular Joe’ and his broadband connection with the ability and the Defense’s desire to hear from us, does fulfill every GI Joe and GI Jane bottled-up within us

Cit - http://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/    What is the DARPA Network Challenge?The DARPA Network Challenge is a competition that will explore the roles the Internet and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team building, and urgent mobilization required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems. The Network Challenge winner will be the first individual to submit the locations of 10 8-foot balloons moored at 10 fixed locations in the continental United States. The balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roads. “

Here’s the long and the short of it.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is celebrating the birth of the Internet with a contest that tests its capabilities to bring people together. At 10AM EST, ten moored red weather balloons will be released across the continental United States for six hours: the first person to submit the latitudes and longitudes of all ten balloons in degree-minute-second (DDD-MM-SS) format will win $40,000.

The balloons will “go up” at 10:00 AM (ET) until approximately 4:00 PM on Saturday, December 5, 2009.  Because of the ET and PC time difference of 3 hours, the balloons will fly for 6 hours on the East Coast and 9 hours on the West Coast.  Their positions will be visible but their exact height will be dependant upon trees, wires, weather, etc.

Upon sightings, one has 9 days, until December 14, at midnight ET to submit the entry.  Yes, 9 days!

In order to participate with this challenge, and in order to enter the information, one person needs to register - http://www.darpa.mil/networkchallenge Registration opens December 1, 2009.  Once you begin to enter your information, if you have trouble, e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Winning
Now, let’s go over how to win!  Social Network!  Social Network!  Social Network!   Or, you know that obnoxious friend with the brand new Cessna?  Well, maybe it’s time to parley and take that bird out of the hanger.  Or, get your group across the US together now to ban together to exchange data-for-dineros, that is should your team win – social networking at it most fun.  Or network with others on sites such as:
www.redballoonrace.com
www.spotbigred.com
www.cashforredballoons.com

IM, SMS, Twitter, #hashtag, Facebook, e-mail to your team Captain, GYPSii … just network!  It will all work with the right leader and concise directions for each team.

All right, GI’s!  Information, reliability and productivity is in the hands of the people, meaning, you!  No longer at we at the mercy of larger entities, we are now officially at a point in our society where every single one of us matters in order to form a cohesive and collaborative unit.  So, let’s make the most of it, have fun and make some cold-hard-cash!

Come on, Big Red!

---

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites