GovLoop Founder Steve Ressler was able to catch up with the incredible and ever-awesome Amanda Eamich, Director of New Media at USDA, to ask her a few questions about a sweet new contest that they are hosting in tandem with the White House. Check it out!
1. For those that don’t know…what’s the elevator pitch for Apps for Healthy Kids? What is it all about?
With childhood obesity continuing to rise, the goal of the Apps for Healthy Kids challenge is to motivate the creation of innovative, fun, and engaging tools and games that encourage children – directly or through their parents – to make more nutritious food choices and to be more physically active.
2. You launched the program a few weeks back. What’s been the initial reaction?
Last week, a member of the OSTP team told us a story about his son who was motivated by a new game bundled with a pedometer for kids. The game encourages physical activity by unlocking new features the more he walks. Together, they wrote a letter to the First Lady acknowledging the importance of physical activity that can be stimulated through game play. The message is reaching people in tangible ways and they find both timely and inspiring. We are really excited to see the submissions from developers of all ages.
3. Often the hardest part is outreach for government initiatives. What steps are you taking to get the word out to companies and developers?
At last week’s 2010 Game Developers Conference, a letter from the First Lady recognized the importance of industry expertise. In the letter, she challenged attendees to dedicate their creative energy and skills to address one of our biggest challenges of combating childhood obesity and making healthy living fun, exciting and relevant.
In addition to the First Lady’s overwhelming support of the issue, Aneesh Chopra has been an outstanding advocate for these efforts. His office hosted a workshop in February to bring together members of the gaming and technology communities to help us determine how to make this challenge a success. Following the workshop we solicited feedback on OSTP, White House and USDA blogs and Twitter channels and we will continue to keep lines of communication open as people design their submissions for the competition.
4. I’m super-impressed with the judges. Steve Woz (co-founder of Apple), Mark Pincus (CEO of Zynga – one of largest social game companies). How did you connect with these people? And what was their reaction?
To say that we are thrilled to have such a highly esteemed judging panel is an understatement. It shows that there is an appetite (no pun intended) for innovation and helping solve critical issues in creative ways.
5. Length – The contest gives developers a little over 3 months to submit their apps. Any reason you picked that length of time? I’m personally really interested on how long to structure contests/dialogues in our ADD culture.
Three months will give developers time to design a game or app without forgetting about the challenge. Also, we really want to engage students in high school or higher learning institutions. It would be really exciting to see a class develop a game or app as part of their learning plan to earn credit in addition to making a positive impact on the health and well being of others.
6. For those on GovLoop interested in doing something similar at their federal agency, or state/local/international government….do you have any recommendations or best practices in getting started?
The OMB Guidance on Prizes and Challenges issued a day before our challenge launched is a great resource that will help other agencies to do something similar. Most importantly, get everyone involved: the issue experts can identify goals and needs, the technical team to determine what is possible and what may require additional development, communicators to spread the word and of course general counsel. When it comes to competitions, it is critical to ensure you have addressed concerns of privacy, intellectual property and other regulatory requirements.
Pick a goal that makes sense to your mission at can truly make an impact. Most importantly, get creative. We realize that as a government we may not have all the answers, so we’re relying on the creative and innovative spirit of the public.
7 – P.S. What’s your favorite healthy food?
As a kid I always ate my vegetables and loved most all of them. As an adult, I’m a big fan of leafy greens and tofu.