Builder Challenges

Changes are upon the world's economic and political systems. Once mighty hierarchies - run by top-down Leaders and Managers - are losing their ability to command allegiances and resources.

Self-organizing networks of "Builders" are fountainheads for innovation today in virtual and actual realms. Their contributions will grow as communication barriers fall and billions of people link together.

The Builder Challenges site seeks to speed this emergence. Its aim, with backing from Openworld, is to help bloggers and social tribes create contests to find and reward new Builders in their communities.

We've launched the project in response to ideas from Umair Haque, whose new Builders' Manifesto surveys growing opportunities for the social web. Yochai Benkler, Seth Godin, Kevin Kelly, Clay Shirky, James Surowiecki, and many others have also illuminated the momentum of crowdsourcing and voluntary social production.

In the weeks and months ahead, this site will offer new resources to accelerate the Buildership Revolution. Tools for "Builders Challenge" competitions will be our key focus. We are working to speed arrival of a day in which social media not only offer facts and opinions, but feature opportunities for their readers to generate ideas and self-organize initiatives linked to their world-changing aspirations.

Along with providing tools for bloggers to launch microcontests on their sites, we will explore ways for blog readers and "tribe" members to directly raise the value of the contest awards. Crowdsourcing of rewards for the Builders Challenge competitions can take a number of forms:

• advance agreements by bloggers/tribe members to lift the visibility of Builders (through follows, friending, and re-Tweets) who win competitions for projects leading to a better future;
• pledges by blog readers and tribe members to pool donations of affinity points for contest winners (e.g. giving frequent flier miles to contest winners via LoyaltyMatch.com);
• donations of actual funds and/or online reputation currencies (via Pledgebank.com); and
• agreements by admired thinkers and doers to engage in direct chats and meetings with, and/or otherwise advise, Builders who emerge from contests to advance the blog's or tribe's ideals. 

As you've likely guessed, priority one for our site will be to feature a "Builders Challenge box" - along with a way to give in-kind or other resources - in support of developing resources useful to other Builders Challenge sites.  We invite you to explore the site and offer ideas and help on the way forward. If you are an open source software developer, we especially invite your support in designing and developing a replicable infrastructure for contests and crowdsourced reward systems at our newly-launched Buildership Lab.  This will speed creation and rollout of resources for blogs and tribes also working to co-create solutions for the Buildership era.

Let us know what you think - and any ways you'd like to help on wellsprings for Builders at a critical time for the world.