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The Babel Prize
How can we ensure that the prize winner will keep the site up after winning the prize money?
12/14/2007 12:29PM EST
I'm open for suggestions... Another related problem is that bandwidth costs money. Who is going to be paying for all the bandwidth after the prize is awarded. There needs to be a way for the prize winner to monetize the site and receive an ongoing revenue stream to ensure that the site continues to provide free access to children.
12/14/2007 7:31PM EST
If some donors with deep pockets do start coming in... I still suspect it won't be an issue. This project is huge, when you start digging into the actual implementation and requirements. A 10-year-old child has about a 3000-word vocabulary (according to 2 minutes of research, at least)... you need to bring your students to that level in 8 languages. Even just the *media* requirements will be difficult to fulfill at any useful level of quality, and assessing and integrating the media will be an enormous task requiring a team, not an individual (even if they have already mastered the 8 languages personally...).
So it's an extremely large project that would require a lot of financial support *before* the prize could be awarded. It could be monetized at launch (sold to adults), and this might work quite well as a business venture, but the investment required first would be big.
I'm still thinking over ways to manage this using donated & distributed resources, photos, video, audio, organizational tasks, etc.., but I don't think it's possible with this kind of scope, plus the very high level of quality required for language teaching materials to be effective.
12/16/2007 12:33PM EST
The best implementation would probably be from a single large corporation or organization. Ongoing monetization (continuing to make money after the prize is awarded) is one of my primary concerns for this prize. I agree with you that one of the simplest ways is to charge adults for the same service, but advertising to children may be another possibility, as long as the advertisement does not occur in the middle of learn lessons. Also, I hope the nobility of this prize will allow it to grow to a large size. Business-wise, the prize could be used by a corporation to hedge risks associated with undertaking the building of the system. An immediate prize payout after project completion would provide capital to market the site and help its builders quickly monetize the site without further capital investment.
12/16/2007 12:40PM EST
Oh, I missed you last paragraph. What do you mean by "I'm still thinking over ways to manage this using donated & distributed resources, etc"? Are you thinking that you might be interesting in competing for this prize? I am genuinely interested (as a current software engineer and businessman) what you mean by distributed resources and organization. Are you thinking about building this system using crowd-sourcing/hive knowledge? It's an idea that would make sense. Would you mind explaining some of what you are thinking (at least in general terms)?
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