Author Description

This book is a compendium of 78 selected papers that I have submitted between 2011 and 2020 to crowd-sourcing contests. The idea behind crowd-sourcing is that a client, say the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), has a problem and wants it solved. The client works through a crowd-sourcing organization such as TopCoder, Challenge.gov, Idea Connection or Innocentive. This organization acts as a liaison between the client and a world-wide solver community. The contest is announced, requirements are provided, a deadline is set, and solutions to the client's problem are accepted. Winners get cash prizes. Many different types of challenge are posted, including idea generation contests, web design, PowerPoint briefing enhancements, coding challenges, test procedures, and algorithm development and benchmarking. The ideas presented here are from idea generation contest entries.