Nerdfighteria's team for the DARPA Network Challenge (red balloons) (2009)
project history · status: completed · last event: outcome (2009-12-06) · last mentioned: 2009-12-08
In December 2009 Hank gathered a Nerdfighteria team to find the ten DARPA Network Challenge balloons and win the $40,000 prize for charity. MIT's team won; Nerdfighteria had found nine of the ten balloons.
Parts: Hank asks Nerdfighters to join the Search, Discover, and Confirm balloon team (2009) · Hank asks viewers to search for DARPA balloons and report sightings (2009) · Hank asks non-searchers to join the balloon mailing list for other jobs (2009) · Hank asks Nerdfighters to keep balloon locations secret (2009) · Hank: send balloon-team sign-ups no emails except about the balloon project (2009) · Hank: give any DARPA challenge winnings to the charities of the best P4A 2009 videos (2009)
About: DARPA Network Challenge, DARPA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
| date | event | what | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2009-12-03 (said on 2009-12-04, implied) | launched | Hank launches a Nerdfighteria team to find the ten DARPA Network Challenge balloons and win the $40,000 prize for charity. | $40,000 of Red Balloons 00:00:00 |
| 2009-12-06 | outcome | John reports that Nerdfighteria lost the DARPA balloon challenge when MIT's team won. | LOSERS!!!! 00:00:05 |
| 2009-12-08 | looked back | Hank looks back on the balloon challenge: the fake balloon came from another team, not MIT; the challenge tested rapid mobilisation of intelligence networks; the team found nine of ten balloons. | Announcing the 2009 Project for Awesome!!! 00:00:29 |
Dates are upload dates, which set the order. Where the speaker gives a different recording date in the video, it is added as "said on YYYY-MM-DD, implied" (derived from the date said in the video).
What is said about it
7 statements, by date (the events above are the turns of the thread; these are the details).
- 2009-12-03 (said on 2009-12-04, implied) · $40,000 of Red Balloons — Hank says DARPA, the U.S. military's research arm, which created the internet, is putting up 10 eight-foot weather balloons across the US; the first to locate all 10 wins $40,000. — 00:00:00
- 2009-12-03 (said on 2009-12-04, implied) · $40,000 of Red Balloons — Hank thought $40,000 would make the Project for Awesome a little more awesome. (playful) — 00:00:30
- 2009-12-03 (said on 2009-12-04, implied) · $40,000 of Red Balloons — Hank says he, John, the Nerdfighters and YouTube are unusually good at being a tight-knit community that is geographically disparate, making this a chance to 'prove our awesome'. — 00:00:30
- 2009-12-06 · LOSERS!!!! — John says Nerdfighteria lost the DARPA balloon challenge despite being tantalizingly close to winning $40,000 to make the Project for Awesome more awesome. — 00:00:05
- 2009-12-08 · Announcing the 2009 Project for Awesome!!! — Hank says they falsely accused MIT of planting the fake balloon; it was another of the many competing teams, and he apologises to MIT. — 00:00:29
- 2009-12-08 · Announcing the 2009 Project for Awesome!!! — Hank thinks DARPA wanted to learn how easily a group can be rapidly mobilised for a task, whether finding balloons, a missing child or blowing up strategic targets. (hedged) — 00:00:29
- 2009-12-08 · Announcing the 2009 Project for Awesome!!! — Hank says, as he said on Twitter, the team may have found only nine of the ten balloons in the real world. (playful, hedged) — 00:01:36