All is quiet at Strutta HQ these days; it is reminiscent of a few months back when were all pushing to release our initial beta.

Long periods of focussed quiet are contrasted periodically by high-energy whiteboard sessions, as the talented development team and the dilligent (and handsome!) marketing staff work together in blissful harmony toward a common end goal. It's enough to bring a tear to your eye really, or maybe I just love what I do too much. 

The research that Mark has conducted on Strutta's behalf has turned up some interesting patterns and similarities between the new product we're building, reality tv shows and even the current US Presidential race. 

Actually, the differences are more telling. The finale of American Idol on one night draws more votes than any one presidential candidate on election day. Meanwhile, our research around online contests has highlighted the importance of prizes for both participants and voters, with the former seeming easier to attract than the latter. There is very little at stake for a voter that calls or texts their support for a reality show candidate, so why the huge numbers there? 

We're willing to conclude that technology is a major factor. Proving that mobile technology is the way of the "future," text messages are almost certainly tipping the scales considerably. In actual fact, the ability to vote from one's home, regardless of the technology, makes it a low threshold to participation. So the comparison isn't fair, but it's still fun to make it.

The participants of the current election aren't foolish enough to ignore this fact, either. As I write, I'm waiting for word of Barack Obama's running mate; an announcement he has vowed to make via text message. Not on TV, or on the front page of a printed newspaper, but on your cell phone. Even that crusty old John McCain is riding this new wave of technology and has started reading emails; I've heard he entertains a digest of them in printed form from his advisors each morning. Careful there, future boy!

So what does this mean for the new version of Strutta? It means that we recognize that companies, their fans, contest enterers, agencies, marketers and everyday web surfers have a slieu of different needs and interests when it comes to online contests and competitions, and we have to be prepared to accomodate them all. Additionally, we've had to prepare ourselves to advise as to what formula is most likely to work best with any one market, based on the trends we've noticed in the habits of participants.

As part of our Fall launch of what we're unofficially calling "Version 2," we'll be announcing a list of "Launch Partners," a number of companies whose online contests and promotions will be released along with our new software. Each will have its own unique approach to prizing and participation, and should help to exhibit the flexibility of what we're building. We've already made arrangments with a number of partners, but there's still time to be a part of this program (in which we are waving the cost of development for participants). Just fill out the form at the end of the post where we announced it, and we'll follow up with you.

If you have any suggestions or questions, feel free to leave them here in the comments. 

Image source: Noise to Signal by Rob Cottingham. 

A few weeks back we told you about the five interns in our office from the Shad Valley Program, who are sharing space with us while they intern for the Impact Entrepreneurship Group. Did you catch all that?

The students are guests of our office mates at Bootup Labs; they're getting to hang in our cool Gastown digs while they work, which has to make working during their summer a little easier, right? Seems like it, if you consider the words of Wendy, one of the five:

"Everyone seems really impressed with our office at Bootuplabs, they tell us we’re going to be spoiled because we’ll never get as good of an office ever again."

But it's not all just free sodas, Rockband and staring out at the view for these youngsters, they're actually putting their noses to the grindstone and getting some work done. Take for instance their first project, the "Microcredit Challenge." 

Here's how it breaks down, in their words from their original blog post: 

In this competition, we give Canadian high school students the chance to be entrepreneurs while raising money for charity. We want to foster creativity, the courage to take risks, and a collective responsibility to help those in need. Students sign up in teams (200 across the country) with one team per school. On October 20th, we give each team one hundred dollars. They then have one week to multiply this initial capital into as much money as possible. Afterwards, we donate the proceeds to charity and microfinance organizations. Outstanding teams will win prizes in six categories: sustainability, profitability, innovation, positive social impact, community engagement, and best overall.

As you can see, we’ve created a win-win situation.  Students benefit, and so do needy people around the world. As interns, we’re excited to be involved with a project that makes a difference, that changes the world and that has an impact (pun intended).

Want to help them out? Consider giving a link to these fledgling bloggers, or get involved directly by sponsoring them: 

We need your help in this endeavour, since we are looking for prizes to award outstanding teams. There are many benefits to becoming one of our sponsors. Besides the fact that to support our initiative (which is completely non-profit and volunteer-run) is to support Canadian youth development and charity, more than 200,000 people will be exposed to our competition. With two hundred teams composed of five participants, hundreds of students will be reached in every participating school, and will generate a significant amount of media coverage. We’d be sure to give our sponsors lots of publicity, especially on our website and in our promotional materials. By partnering with us, your organization stands to gain a more positive image of charity and community involvement.

Any sort of help is welcome. We’re looking for prizes to award to our winners, as we’ve already mentioned, preferably in sets of five so that each team member can get one. However, any prize and publicity that you can give us would be greatly appreciated. If you’re interested, please contact Wendy at wendy.ming@impact.org.

Cheers,

The Impact Interns

 We wish them the best of luck!

The newest version of Strutta, with an entirely brand new feature-set, is set to launch early this Fall.

While we ramp up to that release, I though it would be fitting if I shared a few of the details about how we arrived at this point, and share some of the user feedback that drove these changes.

While we were tracking the feedback that we received from the beta contact form (link only available in logged-in view), and the actions of users on the site, we also began to notice trends in the "in-person" feedback that we received from our friends and the local tech community.

Players, Voters and Viewers, "Oh My!" 

Most people's first question was "What do you win?" People wanted to know whether there was more at stake than just the bragging rights that come with staking one's claim as the best in the world at (insert category that previosuly had no forum for competition here). We are delighted to find that with just exposure and a little online rivalry as motivation, people were quite willing to put their talents on diplay, and let the community decide a favorite.

But that momentum was hindered some, and after a while we discovered a few trends in our stats that helped explain why that is. Some of the more popular games and videos on the site got plenty of views, but voting was proportionately low. Bragging rights were up for grabs for the folks that came out on top in any given game, but voters weren't flocking to those games en masse in support of these players.

We had always known that Strutta had to have an incentive plan for voters as well, and we embarked on building a points system that bring voters as much into the competition as the players themselves. The initial launch tracked voter scores, but we were well aware that the voting currency needed to have more emphasis, and had always planned to build it out; it was only a matter of how. 

While we pondered this challenge, we started to notice another trend in the feedback we received about the site. Companies started enquiring about how they might be able to access our technology to decide the winners of their own competitions. From day one, we had a plan about how to incorporate sponsorship of games while remaining true to the community we were building, but these questions really got us to thinking about the needs of those companies, and how we could help them. 

And thus we began work on this new concept, which as you've probably already heard, will combine all of the elements that people enjoy about Strutta, and enable companies to offer prizing in their own competitions. Our goal os to provide the tools that allow personal users, companies, ad agencies and marketers the ability to structure their own user-generated content contests, with their own rules.

Over the next few weeks leading up to our launch, we'll share a few contest case studies like the one Mark has already blogged. By exploring the current online contest space, we're helping ourselves better understand what works and what doesn't- and why not share our findings with you, the reader? Stay tuned...

With 1248 possible panels to vote on using the SXSW "interactive panel picker" it's a bit difficult to actually read through all of the descriptions (see previous post on contests with too many entries). Thankfully, Dave Olson at Raincity Studios slogged through the list, picked out the best (with a slight Vancouver bias) and posted them on the Raincity Studios blog.

Strutta's very own Danny Robinson and the rest of the Bootup Labs crew hope to present a panel on the evolution of the venture capital model called, "Booting up your Startup". Check out the description and rate it by August 29th.

In theory, the DEW D.I.Y. promotion was a good idea: Mountain Dew asked people to create art, tech or game gear with Mountain Dew branding, then submit pictures of their masterpieces for a chance to win thousands of dollars. They even offered local prizes, with the top entrant from each college receiving $250. Some marketing genius probably envisioned dorms buzzing with students chugging Mountain Dew, building MD robots and knitting MD scarves for orphans. In practice, all you had to do was write "Mountain Dew" on an old jock, upload it to the sports gear category and if nobody else entered from your college, you just made $250. Awesome.