1. Bee Conjuring and Swarm Orchestration Optimizing Collaborative Innovation April 12, 2006 Ned Gulley The MathWorks, Inc.

2. 1.Conjuring a crowd 2.Keeping them busy 3.Social issues 4.Future directions

3. 1.Conjuring a crowd 2.Keeping them busy 3.Social issues 4.Future directions Problem design Micro-rewards War stories Next big thing

4. Contest features Entries are automatically scored, ranked, and displayed immediately Code, author, and score are visible at all times Anyone can modify anyone else's code and resubmit it as their own

5. How it works rules standings 1 karim 2 carol 3 eric karim. fcn f(x)... view entry new entry ned. fcn f(x)... 1 ned 2 karim 3 carol 4 eric

7. What makes a good problem? Low cost of admission Plenty of headroom

8. Blockbuster

9. What to reward? A good answer Gotten quickly

10. Better Time WednesdayMonday

11. Better Answer Faster Result

12. 1000!

13. Social issues hacking tweaking obfuscation acknowledgment scoring inequities tweak bombs clone bombs

14. Obfuscation function A = domove(A,mv) N(:) = false; findNeighbors(mv(1),mv(2),A(mv(1),mv(2))); anyN = any(N); for j = 1:size(A,2) if anyN(j) …

15. Obfuscation zzz1018=zzz1018+zzz1032;for zzz1069=2:zzz1014 if zzz1048(zzz1018),zzz1041(zzz1018)=zzz1018; zzz1053=zzz1018-zzz1032; if zzz1048(zzz1053)==zzz1048(zzz1018) zzz1041(zzz1053)=zzz1018;end …

16. Two can play at this game. It's sad that this has sunk to this level. Can't we return to the spirit of the contest? Alan Chalker says…

17. …"spirit of collaboration" vs "spirit of competition"?! This is a competition right? Otherwise, anyone up for a round of cum- ba-ya? Dr. Seuss says…

18. It is a competition, but with certain rules and goals. One of the goals is collaboration and improving other codes. The darkness and twilight zones are added to give people time to develop their own algorithms without being tempted too much for just tweaking others codes. Stijn Helsen says…

19. Titles as conversation Scrambled Eggs Rotten Eggs I didn't start the fire don't get obfuscated... follow the light You Call This Collaboration? Give Me A Break

20. Titles as conversation Tweak Tweak Tweak tweakfest tweak-o-rama slippery ground (tweak me) Seems like everyone's just tweaking I said to myself not to do this kind of things.... Poopdeck Pappy gives in to peer pressure

21. Titles as conversation I wish I knew how this works

22. Player types Spectators, Lurkers Drop-ins, Visitors Tweakers, Top-grazers Algorithm Artists Churners, Integrators Warriors, Obfuscators

23. Player types 1. 2. 3. 4. … Tweaker (many) Churner (few) Drop-in (many)

24. First use of conv First leader with conv

25. Features we’ve added Leaderboard Lots of realtime stats Mini-contests Mid-contest analysis Darkness and twilight Newsgroup discussion Contest blog File differencing

26. Future directions What’s the goal? Fun == Optimizing innovation. How do we optimize? Modulate diffusion Modulate testing Listen to the contestants!

27. Putting the bees to work Contest to create shipping code Rent-a-swarm Create your own contest

28. The Big Lesson: Focus on the small Approachable problem Low start-up cost Acknowledge effort with micro-rewards Many small prizes

30. Similarity Distance Contest Evolution Virus Evolution