1. Because technology matters, but most engineers suck at story telling

2. Because they outperform Russian hackers at “Interweb takeovers”

3. Because we all need help making decisions

4. And because collective intelligence is awesome

5. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Because they get my vote for agency of the year 2010

7. How DARPA explained their motivation “...explore the roles the Internet and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team-building, and urgent mobilization required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems.”

8. What I read ...explore how social networking and real-time web can be used to build online communities to solve time critical organizational challenges...

9. Find 10 red weather balloons in the US

10. “Traditional” media lends a helping hand CNN New York Times contest live – December 5th November 2009 December2009

11. Where were the balloons?

12. So what did the winning teams do?

13. So what did the winning teams do?[hint: no drones, satellites or wire tapping]

14. MIT found all 10 balloons in 8 hrs

15. Winning strategies also had a lot in common

16. What were the critical elements of success?

17. To build a team, you need... media coverage brand recognition (MIT, Georgia Tech) search rank

18. ...but to organize and lead your team you need... recursive recruiting money or money for charity reuse a lot build the special bits run a real-time operations center

19. My nomination for agency of the year 2010 For inspiring creative use of social technologies