I was trying to find out if there were any groups at MIT interested in Bitcoins and had a hard time finding any. Frankly I'm not too surprised since universities often are reinforcing status quo but I wonder if we could set something up to get students involved using a business plan competition model. We could focus it towards students but invite anyone to participate. Some similar competitions have student prizes and professional prizes, so the teams could compete in different categories.
We could discuss the merits but here's how it could work: We invite teams to form at universities all over the country. We get them access to entrepreneurs and experts to help them develop business ideas. We form bounties that anyone can contribute BTC to. We get the teams to post & present their ideas to Youtube and make the stuff go viral. We then have a voting mechanism where the best teams win the bounty and get the accolades. This may attract other investors and help them launch actual businesses.
We could also get sponsors like GLBSE or more mainstream advertisers.
This is similar to the very popular MIT $100k -
The MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition
Welcome to the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition. Over $350K in prizes are given to aspiring entrepreneurs each year through participation in a series of three contests: the Elevator Pitch Contest, the ACCELERATE Contest, and the Business Plan Contest. The winner of the Business Plan Contest takes home $100K!
http://mit100k.org/First, does this sound interesting and second what ideas would you have to make the overall program maximize participation from student groups?
