On July 22, 2015 at 11:59PM PDT was the deadline for submitting the Technical Approach and Testing Applications for those who registered for Google's "Little Box Challenge" competition.
We encourage comments regarding the competition from the participants and non-participants,
posting either on the LinkedIn SMPS Power Supplies group, or on www.SMPS.com website and blog.
On the www.SMPS.com website you would have the option to post a signed article, an anonymous comment
or have a link to your website article pertaining to the "Little Box Challenge" competition.
Here is our story:
- We found out about the Google's "Little Box Challenge" competition in August 2014 through a short posting on our SMPS Power Supplies group on LinkedIn.
The posting drew very little attention, with only two very short responses! Our first registration submission was rejected on the basis that the submitted
resume of the principal involved in the project was too short. We did not boast too much of ourselves and instead just pointed out the education, previous
employers with positions and added a link to our LinkedIn profile for details and endorsements. We thought the a public LinkedIn profile would be
more trustworthy than a detailed confidential resume. Nevertheless, we re-applied with more details about our work experience and achievements related
with high power density and high efficiency power converters. We received the confirmation of the successful registration on 2014 August 4.
Interesting enough, the confirmation email was also telling us that if we were an academic, Google has grants available to support the design efforts!
Hmmm! Wouldn't this be a conflict of interests, when you launch a competition to the public at large, but simultaneously finance only a particular group
to win the competition? Wouldn't the organizer be tempted to steer the judgment process toward naming the winner one of their own financed competitors?
Or tweak the competition rules to favor a sponsored competitor? ...