opening up 9292 as a company to outside development. Without
explicitly expressing this as such, I suddenly realized the existing
paradigm was about to change. The old paradigm was one of a
closed shop, in which we built everything in-house, with no or
very strict allowance to use data outside of 9292 without express
permission and licensing. We were about to break that barrier for
good and start exchanging notes with young users out there. And
there was hardly a way back. The Dutch expression for this is: If
there is one sheep over the dam, more will follow.
Designing a public contest
Who would build the best app on any of the existing platforms
for public transport use? Moderate money prizes of a few thousand
euros were established for the winner and two runners-up, a press
moment was created for
the winners to “gain
eternal fame” and for us
to hand over the prize.
The winners would also
be considered for future
development coopera-tion with 9292. A special site was created by
our I T department that
enabled outside developers to start using “dummy” examples of
our datasets. This made it possible to query test databases from
the outside, which we would share with the development teams
that decided to join the public contest. A set of developer’s docu-mentation was written for that purpose.
“A special site was created by our IT department that enabled outside
developers to start using ‘dummy’
examples of our datasets.”
The competition’s details
A jury was installed, consisting of our development lead, a well-known journalist/commentator on new technology, our communica-tions manager, and me. The public contest was given ample publicity
by our communications manager and started in March 2009. By the
end of the month, 22 student teams had signed up to compete. Six
submissions were evaluated on reliability, usability, interface design,
and overall structural design and architecture. In June the prize
winners were announced. The #1 application was more of a rebuild
of what we already had up and running on our mobile website at
mobiel.9292ov.nl. Actually, one of the most common traits of the
applications then being built was that they more or less replicated
existing functionality. The runner-up’s application, however, was far
more interesting, as it brought together new ways of looking at how
to plot a trip in a graphical, or non-textual, fashion using pinpoints in
a digital map and deploying a Google Maps® interface.
Although #2’s design and features were far superior to that of
the ultimate winner, we could not give this particular prize winner
the #1 slot because his application was not entirely stable, and the
ultimate goal was to deliver a working solution. There were some
reservations about the public contest within our own development
group, but as the team members were brought onboard through the
participation of the head of development, their effective coopera-tion was established. In addition, the contest enabled them to turn
their attention to other fields of interest we were simultaneously
exploring. Usually there is no lack of projects but, rather, of project
participants and their time. Finally, the prizes were handed out to
the contestants by the State Secretary of the Ministry of Transport
in June, which attracted sizable publicity.
Contributors to “speaker’s corners” on the Internet sometimes
use strong language in venting their opinions. We noticed that
some bloggers tended to view our public contest as a way to
pick the brains of young developers cheaply. Some said we were
engaging developers for our company’s purposes for a pittance
of the money they would be paid under a normal contract. Act-ing quickly, we clarified the situation on our website and in the
media and were able to neutralize the debate to a large extent.
We pointed out that our applications are typically either free via
a fixed Internet or mobile Internet site or at a very low cost. If we
decide to charge for applications, we intend to keep our services
inexpensive, such as a few euros, just to keep the thresholds low.
Thus, because the applications will not rake in enormous amounts
of money, using young outside developers to help build them can’t
be considered abusive.
Be prepared: You always will have strong opposition to any
idea you are about to float on the Internet. It requires both a thick
skin to bear the consequences and preparedness to deal with
criticism effectively.
A new cooperation and business model
When the public contest was over, we decided to talk to the
runner-up and put this 19-year-old student in touch with our
developers at The Mobile Company, our mobile Internet partner.
Through a tripartite agreement, we were able to secure a coop-erative agreement that
would work for all: for
the developer, who
was still in college, a
revenue share and a
part-time job; for us,
the right to use the
new app as a formal
9292 application to which we attached our brand; for The Mobile
Company, the new input from the next generation of developers
right in the heart of its development effort. Also, we were able to
“sell” for a limited amount of money our application in the App
Store so we could recoup our development cost. So far, all our
development in the past 10 years for travellers had delivered us
“The #1 application was more of a rebuild of what we already had
up and running.”
Exhibit 1: Screens of the iPhone app
Main screen Map screen
