Community
Challenge was conceived by Steve Thompson of Teesside University. In
the year 2000 we saw the very first online pubquiz between
Skinningrove in Timms Coffee House and the Black Bull in Trimdon.
Skinningrove won! This was a great boost for Skinningrove for a
number of reasons. Firstly Skinningrove were just recovering from
two massive floods. The other reason was that the Black Bull had
what they thought was an ace on their team – recently elected Prime
Minister Tony Blair (pictured below right).
In the first of these the opposing teams set the questions for each
other but the concept developed over time. This led to a whole string
of Community Challenges which grew in size until it covered the entire
country. There was even a Euro Challenge. We had a TV crew with
us at the time
so you can enjoy the atmosphere at Timms Coffee House in the video
below.
Click to enlarge.
This event
was in
the very early days of UK online and captured the interest of the
emerging network. This came to the attention of BECTA and in particular
a guy named Alastair Clark. Through Alastair and Fred Garnett of Becta
and Steve Thompson at Teesside Uni further challenges were set up
across the UK (see pic on right). The process had developed a little
since the early days but it was still a heath robinson affair using
web-page forms for the questionnairs which went to a moderator via
email. We also added image uploads which were also emailed to the
moderator and added via FTP and a simple forum. The station Hotel in
Loftus won this challenge.
Click to enlarge
Next came a
European Challenge using the same mechanisms. This was organised by
Alastair of Becta and representatives for all the UK teams went to
Amiens in France to meet people engaged in something very similar to UK
Online. This culminated in teh first Euro-Challenge which The Station
Hotel in Loftus won. (again)
The first few Challenge
events
were run 'manually', with moderators
hacking away at pre-prepared web pages between rounds to update the
scores and activate the links to the question and answer pages. Answers
were submitted by formmail. The Challenge experience was great fun and
all
of the events were a great success. BECTA now proposed a UK wide
Challenge to involve 52 teams in a knock-out competition. What we
needed to achieve this was a tool to simplify the processes.
Dave Eagle of Teesside University developed the software we use to this
day. Dave designed the back-end database (MySQL) and designed and
implemented the site (originally in PERL, but now in PHP with some
JavaScript).
We were then able to run "Challenge The Nation" with 52 competing
teams. The finals were webcast from BECTA's Coventry headquarters.
The most recent challenge
to
take place was the "Two Tribes" Challenge between the Maynard Arms in
Carlin How and Toad Hall Arms in Moorsholm. For this event we streamed
video from each location and during one interval we had online Karaoke
by Barry Hunt streamed from The Maynard Arms. Toad Hall won this event.
The challenge tool is fairly simple to use. Some people are
dissapointed that all the processes are no automated but the software
was built on the original principles of community engagement. This
means that peope have to take ownership of the event and run it
accordingly. Some one has to take responsibility for setting up and
producing 30 questions. This is a good thing because it means the
questions can be aimed at the particular audience. We have had
challenges between school children, University Students (where the
answers were largely mathematical equations) as well as between pubs
and learning centres. There are two videos below explaining the setting
up and managing of a Community Challenge.
