Stump the Geek

Our target audience is networking geeks.  The daunting thing for me is that this is generally a group of really smart people. So as I think about this - what might be the value or interest in creating a game? (read: application) that would allow our target audience to compete with each other for escalating recognition and/or prizes?  I have fond memories of ‘stump the geek’ challenges within a live audience whenever a geeky customer felt the need to challenge my engineer. Jimmy Ray in fact welcomed that and made ‘Stump Jimmy Ray’ a regular part of his presentations.  So could we not bring that to our audience building efforts for TechWiseTV?  Couple of articles got me thinking about this: 1. “2 Big Reasons Why Apps Monetize Better Than Social Networks” a blog entry by Justin who covers the blog ‘Inside Facebook’ as well as an interview he did for a company called ‘Context Optional.’  These guys apparently help build Facebook apps.   So my first confession should be obvious at this point - this is a Facebook oriented set of questions here.  Why could we not replicate the spirit of ‘Stump the Geek’ in an online application designed to build up our ‘community’of interactive fans?  (an active community of interactive fans is actually my biggest dream for this show). 

As I think this out. Here are a few things that I think are needed to work this out:

1. The Basics:  Escalating complexity on questions around Cisco Network Trivia is an obvious first step. 
2. Competition among Peers: To create a ‘viral loop’ type effect I think we need to make this a ranking type of thing. “Who is the uber geek?” “Challenge your friends...”  Seems like it would only help us if network geeks were encouraging their peers to join facebook, become fans of our app and challenge each other to the ultimate geek supremacy. 
3. Tie it to TechWise Shows: I would think that this needs to be done with some amount of balance... but I love the idea of people perhaps opting in to answering trivia questions about what we covered on a certain show.  Escalating prizes and stack rankings once again could drive a more interactive audience.
4. Keep it Fresh.  Whatever we do it needs to change often.  This is a smart group of people and we all get whipped by the same ol same ol too often...

What do you think?   Do these ideas suck or do you think they have legs?

Robb