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Matt Micene is an evangelist for Linux and containers at Red Hat. He has over 15 years of experience in information technology, ranging from architecture and system design to data center design. He has a deep understanding of key technologies, such as containers, cloud computing and virtualization. His current focus is evangelizing Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and how the OS relates to the new age of compute environments. He's a strong advocate for open source software and has participated in a few projects. Always watching people, how and why decisions get made, he's never left his anthropology roots far behind.
Authored Comments
Alanna, I agree on the size issues. It's probably the best they can do given all sorts of constraints, not everyone can be the next X Prize. And publicity for the winners is definitely an implied additional prize that is hard to put a value on.
On the collaboration and motivation points for you and Rand, I don't think there's a conflict here. Drawing in folks who normally wouldn't participate is a good way to grow a community beyond its "natural" boundaries. Cross domain knowledge only becomes that when someone tries to apply their experience to a problem they wouldn't normally try to solve. Networks become more valuable when they connect to other networks. The ecosystem will improve and grow if peoples interest is maintained and not harmed if someone leaves after their interest is piqued and then wanes.
Question for you on the size of the prize, do you think it's too large or too small?
To me, any competition, open or closed, fosters interest. The size of the prize can turn it from interest to investment, like the X Prize. $10MM in prize money led to probably over $100MM in the creation of the field of private space flight. If this can push the barrier to entry on launch vehicles down from the Elon Musk's of the world to the rocket hobbyist, I think it's excellent.
If the open all the rocket designs and 3D models after the fact, even better.