Suggestion for Gaia Programming Contest contribution

We in Gaiaware are a little bit worried about our Gaia Programming Contest. Some weeks ago we launched something we called Gaia Programming Contests where the object would be to build a piece of GPL software on top of Gaia Ajax Widgets (our GPL version) where the goal of that software piece would be to serve as a communication portal for people dedicated to solving the "100 years questions". Of course there might be a whole slew of groups currently working on their contribution, but we actually know about NONE at the time of this writing. This is a pretty huge shame since we're actually giving away 10,000 EUROs to the winner.



In addition all the feedback we have gotten from others, e.g. Tony Mobily from FreeSoftwareMagazine.com have suggested that the contest rules might be a little bit "vague". So I am here going to write an example of how you might solve the task and participate in the contest. And hopefully this will trigger some creativity within developers around the world wanting to change the world and at the same time earning 10,000 EURO.

First of all you might create a tree hierarchical structure going from "the world" and fine graining through continents, countries and into regions. This way everybody could participate in whatever "node" they wish to participate in. Then there could be e.g. "internet cafe's" within each node consisting of forums, chat rooms, user submitted content like blogs etc. Possibly it could also consist of a voting system like digg, reddit, dzone or something similar to make sure the Social Media aspects of democracy would be a deciding factor for how to make some content be more visible than other content. Another thing it might contain would be the possibility to create polls for cases linked to forum (threads) with an integrated voting system that would make it possible to use the democratic processes for coming to results about important issues.

Another thing one might see is connections to existing Social Media websites like facebook etc. Maybe also the possibility of adding up links to YouTube videos in the forums etc. Maybe a wiki system integrated within the system to help people understand the different environmental and political challenges for the next 100 years. A HUGE point would be that it would be a portal for communication and user created content in someway. Another huge point as the rules already specifies would be that it must be GPL licensed, it must build on Gaia Ajax Widgets and it must be 100% workable on a complete Open Source stack. The last point in practice means that it must be runnable on Mono and if you use a database system that database system must be Open Source and compatible with the GPL.

Tags: contest