This blog was originally published on the WebWise 2013 blog. By Lisa Rhody This year there will be more workshop choices for WebWise participants than ever before.  In addition to the workshops resulting from IdeaScale voting, WebWise will be offering an additional “Director’s Choice” workshop titled “Designing Prize Competitions.”  Held on the afternoon of Wednesday, March 6^th from 1:00 to 4:00 PM, the “Designing Prize Competitions” workshop will offer practical advice for museums, libraries, and archives that wish to draw on community expertise to address institutional needs.  The workshop will be led by NASA Prizes and Challenges Program Executive Jenn Gustetic.  Participation in the “Designing Prize Competitions” is only available to those who have registered for this year’s WebWise.  If you haven’t registered yet, you can do so on our registration page. More workshop titles and leaders will be announced later in the week, so continue to follow our updates either by returning to this page, by subscribing to our RSS feed, or by following us on Twitter at @imlswebwise.

About the Designing Prize Competitions Workshop

Prize competitions compliment other traditional methods for science and technology advancement including contracts, grants, and partnerships. Prize competitions are often best used when you (1) know what problem you’re trying to solve but don’t need to specify what path should be taken to get there and/or (2) are looking to bring diverse perspectives to problem solving and not just the traditional people that respond to grant calls or requests for proposals (RFPs). The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the US Government’s leader in prize competitions. In this half-day interactive workshop, Jenn Gustetic, NASA’s Prizes and Challenges Program Executive will teach attendees about three inter-related prize topics:

• What are prizes and how are they useful?
• How does an organization select topics for specific prize competitions?
• How are prizes designed and administered?

 About the Workshop Leader:  Jenn Gustetic

Ms. Gustetic’s experience has focused on the public sector with concentrations on prizes and challenges, open government, innovation, public private partnerships, grants management, and technology policy. Currently, Ms. Gustetic is the Prizes and Challenges Program Executive in the Office of the Chief Technologist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. In this leadership and strategy role, Ms. Gustetic coordinates the use of prize competitions for technology development at NASA. Prior to this position, Ms. Gustetic was the Associate Director for Strategic Engagement and Communications at Phase One Consulting Group. In that role, for the Department of Transportation, Ms. Gustetic managed the development of the DOT Open Government Plan and its subsequent implementation. Ms. Gustetic spent several years as a Federal employee at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) as the senior program analyst for $400 million in annual transportation security grant programs. Ms. Gustetic is experienced with social media, maintains her own blog, and has led the development of a federal government blog from conception to operations. Ms. Gustetic speaks often at events and has also authored several papers on many topics including security policy, harnessing public-private partnerships to optimize public service delivery, and the evolution of e-democracy. She holds a BS in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Florida and an SM in Technology Policy from MIT.