Topcoder Explained

Topcoder, Inc.
Foundation:April 2001
Founder:Jack Hughes
Location City:Indianapolis, IN
Location Country:USA
Industry:Information Technology Staffing
Software
Outsourcing services
Parent:Wipro

Topcoder (formerly TopCoder) is a crowdsourcing company with an open global community of designers, developers, data scientists, and competitive programmers. Topcoder pays community members for their work on the projects and sells community services to corporate, mid-size, and small-business clients.[1] [2] Topcoder also organizes the annual Topcoder Open tournament and a series of smaller regional events.

History

Topcoder was founded in 2001 by Jack Hughes, chairman and Founder of the Tallan company.[3] The name was formerly spelt as "TopCoder" until 2013. Topcoder ran regular competitive programming challenges, known as Single Round Matches or "SRMs," where each SRM was a timed 1.5-hour algorithm competition and contestants would compete against each other to solve the same set of problems. The contestants were students from different secondary schools or universities. Cash prizes ranging from $5,000 to $10,000 per match were secured from corporate sponsors and awarded to tournament winners to generate interest from the student community.

As the community of designers, developers, data scientists, and competitive programmers involved in Topcoder grew, the company started to offer software development services to 3rd party clients, contracting individual community members to work on specific tasks. Most of the revenue, though, still came from consulting services provided to clients by Topcoder employees.[4] From 2006 onwards, Topcoder held design competitions, thus offering design services to their clients. In 2006 Topcoder also started to organize Marathon Matches (MM) – one week long algorithmic contests.[5] [6]

In an attempt to optimize expenses, Topcoder introduced new competition tracks in 2007-2008 and delegated more work from its employees to the community. By 2009, the size of Topcoder's staff had been reduced to 16 project managers servicing 35 clients, while the community did most of the actual work via crowdsourcing. Topcoder representatives claim that at this point their community had about 170k registered members, and the company's annual revenue was approximately $19 million.[7]

In 2013, Topcoder was acquired by Appirio, and the Topcoder community (of around 500 thousand at the time), was merged, under the Topcoder brand, with the 75k member crowdsourcing community Cloudspokes, created and managed by Appirio.[8] [9] [10]

In 2016, Topcoder, along with Appirio, was acquired by Wipro as a part of a $500 million deal and continued to operate as a separate company under its brand.[11] [12] [13] [14] [15]

Since the end of 2017, Topcoder has continued to offer its enterprise clients the Hybrid Crowd platform, as a way to protect intellectual property in crowdsourcing projects. In addition to the public Topcoder community, the Hybrid Crowd platform allows for the creation of certified and private crowdsourcing communities. Its certified communities include members of public Topcoder communities who are vetted for a customer's specific requirements, such as signing an additional NDA, completing a background check, or meeting any other particular certifications. The private communities may include an enterprise's employees and contractors. As the first user of Hybrid Crowd, Wipro integrated its internal (employee-only) crowdsourcing platform TopGear with Topcoder.[16] [17] [18] [19]

Topcoder community

Estimated size of Topcoder community!Date!Num. registered members
200210 000 – 20 000
2003~30 000
2004~40 000
2005~60 000
2006~90 000
2007~120 000
2008~160 000 – 170 000
2009~220 000
2013~500 000[20] – 600 000[21]
2014~700 000[22]
2015~850 000[23]
2016~1 000 000[24]
2018~1 200 000[25]
Topcoder community is the primary source of the workforce behind all Topcoder projects. It is open and global: anybody, with a few legal restrictions dictated by US laws, and listed in Community Terms, can join and compete, without any financial commitment to Topcoder. Also, participation in challenges organized in the interests of commercial clients generally requires the community member to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Intellectual property for the winning submissions to commercial challenges is passed to the client, in exchange for monetary prizes paid to the winners.[26] [27]

While the majority of community members participate in Topcoder challenges as regular competitors, those who become recognized for their performance, and involvement in community life (via communication in Topcoder forums, attending Topcoder events, etc.), are offered additional roles in the community, which include: copilots (technical coordinators of challenges), problem writers, reviewers, etc. Since the end of 2014 till the end of 2017, a Community Advisory Board (CAB) was selected from active community members for a one-year term to help improve communications between Topcoder company and its community.[28] [29] [30] [31] In 2018 the CAB was replaced by the Topcoder MVP (Most Valuable Player) program.[32] [33]

There are four primary segments of each Topcoder community, open to every member: Design, Development, Data Science, and Competitive Programming. Also, since the end of 2017, Topcoder, as a part of their Hybrid Crowd offering, creates sub-communities dedicated to specific clients/projects. The sub-communities may require members to meet additional eligibility criteria before joining.[34]

Design

Topcoder design community is focused on:[35]

Two particular types of Topcoder design challenges are LUX (Live User Experience, 24 – 48 hours long) and RUX (Rapid User Experience, three days long). In both cases, more substantial prizes compared to regular design challenges with the similar goals, are offered in exchange for the shorter timeline. Short timelines allow Topcoder managers to demonstrate to customers how crowdsourcing works on real cases, during live, and few-days meetings with the clients.

Development

Software development segment of Topcoder community is focused on:[36]

Data science

There are several types of data science challenges at Topcoder; typically, they are longer than software development challenges and focused on data science and algorithms, rather than on end-user software products:[38]

Competitive programming

The Competitive Programming track of Topcoder community rotates around Single Round Matches (SRMs) – timed 1.5-hour competitions in which all participants compete online trying to solve the same set of problems as fast as possible. These were the first type of challenges at Topcoder.[41]

Specialized sub-communities

The following table includes the list of Topcoder sub-communities dedicated to specific technologies and/or clients (within their Hybrid Crowd offering). See section for further information on these sub-communities.

NamePartnersType[42] Focus
Blockchain Community[43] ConsenSyspublicBlockchain technology projects, with focus on Ethereum platform
Cognitive Community[44] [45] IBMpublicCognitive computing, with a particular focus on IBM Watson services.
Veterans Community[46] [47] Operation CodeOnly for US military veteransEducational and paid software development projects for US military veterans.

Topcoder Open

Topcoder Open (TCO) is an annual design, software development, data science and competitive programming championship, organized by Topcoder, and hosted in different venues around the US. Each year, the most successful participants of each competition track included into TCO are selected and invited for a free one-week trip to on-site finals, where they compete for prizes, and also socialize with each other, helping to build community spirit among the most active members. In the first two years, 2001 and 2002, the tournament was titled TopCoder Invitational.

In addition to the main championship, from 2001 to 2007 Topcoder organized an annual TopCoder Collegiate Challenge tournament, for college students only. Also from 2007 to 2010, a TopCoder High School competition was held.

Since 2015, Topcoder Regional events have been held through the year in different countries.

Notable clients and projects

ConsenSys

In 2017, Topcoder entered into a partnership with ConsenSys, an incubator of Ethereum projects, to promote the Topcoder Blockchain Community, and provide ConsenSys with design and development support for their blockchain projects.[48] [49]

Eli Lilly and Company

It was reported in 2008 that Eli Lilly and Co. would use Topcoder platform to crowdsource development of IT applications for its global drug discovery operations.[50]

Harvard Medical School

In 2013, it was reported that researchers from Harvard Medical School, Harvard Business School, and London Business School successfully used Topcoder Community to solve complex biological problems.[51] Researchers say that Topcoder competitors approached the biology-related big-data challenge, and managed to create a more accurate and 1000 times faster alternative of BLAST algorithm.[52] [53]

IARPA

Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity organization collaborates with Topcoder to create innovative algorithms for intelligence applications. From July 2017 to February 2018 it ran the Functional Map of the World challenge to develop deep learning algorithms capable of scanning and identifying in satellite imagery different classes of objects, such as airports, schools, oil wells, shipyards, or ports .[54] [55] In the ongoing Mercury challenge it aims to create AI methods for automated prediction of critical events, involving military action, non-violent civil unrest, and infectious diseases in Middle East.[56]

IBM

Since 2016 IBM has been collaborating with Topcoder to promote their cloud platform, IBM Cloud, and IBM Watson services, in particular.[57] [58] [59] Within this partnership, Topcoder has created a dedicated Cognitive sub-community and run numerous educational and customer-oriented challenges.[60] [61]

NASA

In 2010, NASA asked the Topcoder community to optimize the contents of medical kits for future human space exploration missions.[62]

In 2013, NASA Tournament Lab cooperated with Topcoder to run data-science challenges targeting to improve computer vision algorithms for their Robonaut 2 humanoid robot;[63] [64] [65] in another challenge, Topcoder members were asked to develop algorithms for optimization of ISS solar arrays usage.[66] Also in 2013 Topcoder helped NASA to develop a software solution for tracking food consumption by astronauts.[67]

In another challenge, Topcoder community helped NASA and National Geographic's explorer Albert Lin to develop an algorithm to identify human-built structures in Genghis Khan's homeland.[68] [69]

In 2014, Asteroid Data Hunter, Asteroid Tracker, and many other challenges were carried on to develop better algorithms for asteroids detection in space images.[70] [71] [72] [73] [74] [75] [76] [77]

In 2015, the Topcoder Data Science community was challenged by NASA, Quakefinder, Harvard Crowd Innovation Lab, and Amazon Web Services, to come up with an algorithm that finds correlations between ultra-low frequency electromagnetic signals emanating from the earth, and subsequent moderate and large earthquakes.[78]

In 2017, NASA, HeroX, and Topcoder announced a challenge to optimize their computational-intensive software solution for fluid dynamics, FUN3D,[79] [80] [81] [82] which was cancelled later due to a high number of applicants (more than 1,800) during the registration, coupled with concerns about control over the public distribution of the software to optimize.[83]

In 2018, a data science challenge is running currently to develop better algorithms for tracking of RFID-tagged items within the International Space Station.[84] [85]

Topcoder Veterans Community

At the end of 2017 Topcoder, together with Operation Code non-profit charity, announced the launch of Topcoder Veterans Community, that will focus on helping US military veterans to make their way into tech careers in software development via education programs and paid crowdsourcing challenges.[86]

See also

Notes and References

  1. Web site: TopCoder's 5 Steps to Building a Global Workforce Community. Diamandis. Peter. March 20, 2013. The Huffington Post. 15 April 2016.
  2. Web site: Don't Retrain Your Team - Instead, Tap The Expertise Of Git Workers On Demand. Winsor. John. February 20, 2019. Forbes. February 21, 2019.
  3. Lakhani KR, Garvin DA, Lonstein E. January 2010. TopCoder (A): Developing Software through Crowdsourcing. Harvard Business School Case. 610–032.
  4. Web site: Genesis to Acquisition: Mike Morris, CEO of Topcoder. Mitra. Sramana. January 2, 2018. One Million by One Million Blog. March 30, 2018.
  5. Web site: Marathon Matches: How They All Began. April 10, 2018. Topcoder Blog. April 12, 2018.
  6. The first Marathon Match at Topcoder took place from May 10 to May 17, 2006: https://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=MatchDetails&rd=10015
  7. News: TopCoder eyeing SMB market. Kanaracus. Chris. October 15, 2008. InfoWorld. April 4, 2018.
  8. TechCrunch report Web site: Appirio Buys TopCoder To Add More Crowdsourcing, And 500K Developers And Designers, To Its CloudSpokes Network. Lunden. Ingrid. September 17, 2013. TechCrunch. 2014-01-15.
  9. News: Appirio officially unifies CloudSpokes and topcoder. Clancy. Heather. January 21, 2014. ZD Net. April 4, 2018.
  10. News: Topcoder lets developers compete to build the best app for your business. Weinberger. Matt. January 15, 2014. IT News. April 8, 2018.
  11. News: Appirio's TopCoder too is a big catch for Wipro. Phadnisi. Shilpa. October 21, 2016. The Times of India. April 4, 2018.
  12. News: Wipro is buying cloud consultant Appirio for $500M. Sayer. Peter. October 20, 2016. PCWorld. April 4, 2018.
  13. News: India - Wipro to Acquire Cloud Services Company, Appirio. October 24, 2016. Staffing Industry Analysts. April 8, 2018.
  14. News: Wipro bids for As-a-Service... with Abid. Fersht. Phil. November 29, 2016. Horses for Sources. April 14, 2018.
  15. News: With the acquisition of Appirio, Wipro expects to stay ahead of the game. Mendonca. Jochelle. October 24, 2016. The Economic Times. April 14, 2018.
  16. News: We have put in the basic ingredients to execute well: Wipro COO. Peermohamed. Alnoor. January 25, 2017. SmartInvestor.in. April 14, 2018. Krishnan. Raghu.
  17. News: Wipro Converging its Crowdtesting Activities Around QaaS & Topcoder. Raviart. Dominique. October 4, 2017. Nelson Hall. April 14, 2018.
  18. News: Wipro's Top Gear: A new work construct in the 'digital' age. Pai. Siddharth. June 6, 2017. Live Mint. April 14, 2018.
  19. News: Wipro Launches Hybrid Crowd In Move To Capture Digital Expertise. Bendor-Samuel. Peter. December 18, 2017. Forbes. April 29, 2018.
  20. In 2013, ~500k registered members was the estimated size of Topcoder community before its merge with ~75k members strong CloudSpokes community. Hence, after the merge the size of resulting community became ~575 000 registered members.
  21. News: Leaders in Change and Innovation to Keynote TopCoder Open Innovation Summit. October 15, 2013. Market Wired. April 18, 2018.
  22. News: Appirio and Industry Leaders Host 2014 Topcoder Open to Celebrate How Developers Are Changing the World. October 29, 2014. CISION PR Newswire. April 16, 2018.
  23. News: Top programmers and Designers Travel to Compete in the 2015 Topcoder Open India Regional Event. August 20, 2015. Appirio Newsroom. April 16, 2018.
  24. News: Topcoder Community: 1 Million Members Strong. May 8, 2016. Topcoder Blog. April 4, 2018.
  25. News: We are banking on digital to drive our growth. Kannan. Uma. May 5, 2018. Deccan Herald. May 9, 2018. Vijayakumar. N V.
  26. Web site: Topcoder Help Center. Topcoder Help Center. April 10, 2018.
  27. Web site: Terms & Conditions of Use at Topcoder. Topcoder. April 10, 2018.
  28. News: The Topcoder Community Advisory Board is Finally Here!. October 31, 2014. Topcoder Blog. April 15, 2018.
  29. Web site: Topcoder Community Advisory Board. February 9, 2018. Topcoder Help Center. April 15, 2018.
  30. Web site: 2017 Community Advisory Board. April 15, 2018.
  31. Web site: Community Advisory Board Yearbook. April 15, 2018.
  32. News: Introducing the 2018 Topcoder MVP Members!. January 25, 2018. Topcoder Blog. April 15, 2018.
  33. Web site: MVP Program. April 15, 2018.
  34. News: Topcoder Launches Hybrid Crowd to Deliver New Levels of On-Demand Talent to the Enterprise. December 12, 2017. Wipro Newsroom. April 14, 2018.
  35. Web site: Choosing a Design Challenge. January 19, 2018. Topcoder Help Center. April 10, 2018.
  36. Web site: Development Challenge Types. July 20, 2017. Topcoder Help Center. April 10, 2018.
  37. Web site: What is QA?. Topcoder. April 10, 2018.
  38. Web site: Data Science Challenge Types. March 3, 2017. Topcoder Help Center. April 10, 2018.
  39. News: Marathon Match 100 with Prizes & T-Shirts. April 11, 2018. Topcoder Blog.
  40. News: Marathon Match 100: Winners and More!. May 4, 2018. Topcoder Blog. May 8, 2018.
  41. Web site: SRM Overview. April 25, 2017. Topcoder Help Center. April 10, 2018.
  42. public = any Topcoder member can join; otherwise additional eligibility conditions
  43. Web site: Topcoder Blockchain Community. April 14, 2018.
  44. Web site: Topcoder Cognitive Community. cognitive.topcoder.com.
  45. News: Topcoder and IBM Partner to Bring Watson to the Topcoder Community. November 10, 2016. Topcoder Blog. April 8, 2018.
  46. Web site: Topcoder. veterans.topcoder.com.
  47. News: Topcoder Launches Crowdsourcing Community to Help U.S. Military Veterans Transition to Technology Jobs. December 14, 2017. Wipro Press Release. April 8, 2017.
  48. News: Topcoder, ConsenSys partner to create blockchain engineers community. September 29, 2017. ComputerWorld. April 10, 2018.
  49. News: ConsenSys, Topcoder Partner to Create Ethereum Engineering Community. Pimentel. David. September 29, 2017. Block Tribune. April 10, 2018.
  50. News: Eli Lilly aims to tap "rock star" programmers. Havenstein. Heather. May 18, 2008. Computerworld. April 30, 2018.
  51. News: Solving big-data bottleneck: Scientists team with business innovators to tackle research hurdles. February 7, 2013. Science News. April 30, 2018.
  52. Lakhani KR, Boudreau KJ, Loh PR, Backstrom L, Baldwin C, Lonstein E, Lydon M, McCormack A, Arnaout RA, Guinan EC. February 7, 2013. Prize-based contests can provide solutions to computational biology problems. Nature Biotechnology. 31. 2. 108–111. 10.1038/nbt.2495. 23392504. 4527172.
  53. Eisenstein. Michael. July 9, 2013. Crowdsourced contest identifies best-in-class breast cancer prognostic. Nature Biotechnology. 31. 7. 578–580. 10.1038/nbt0713-578b. 23839130. 885686 .
  54. Web site: Differentiating a port from a shipyard is a new kind of problem for AI. Cebul. Daniel. September 18, 2018. C4ISRNET. September 18, 2018.
  55. News: IARPA, Lockheed researchers prepare to retrain algorithms for government use. Jackson. Monica. September 19, 2018. ExecutiveGov. September 20, 2018.
  56. Web site: Mercury Challenge Data Science Match. Topcoder. September 18, 2018.
  57. News: IBM Watson, Topcoder bring AI capabilities to more than 1 million developers. Moore. Madison. November 10, 2016. SD Times. April 8, 2018.
  58. News: IBM's Watson & Cloud Now Available to Topcoder Community. November 10, 2016. Nasdaq. April 8, 2018.
  59. News: IBM Launches Experimental Platform to Embed Watson in Any Device. November 9, 2016. iCrunchData.
  60. News: Build Better Government on Blockchain - TopCoder Challenge. Meren. Kathryn. July 20, 2017. IBM Middleware User Community Blog. April 8, 2018.
  61. News: IBM Brings Low-Code App Development to Bluemix. Taft. Darryl. April 13, 2017. The News Stack. April 8, 2018.
  62. News: TopCoder Community Refines Medical Kits For Future NASA Space Missions. July 28, 2010. Solar Daily. April 6, 2018.
  63. News: NASA and TopCoder to issue Robonaut 2 "sight" challenge. Kolawole. Emi. March 29, 2013. The Washington Post. April 6, 2018.
  64. News: NASA + Topcoder Team-Up on an Advanced Robotics Algorithm Challenge. February 6, 2016. Topcoder Blog. April 6, 2018.
  65. News: NASA, TopCoder Announce $30,000 Contest to Maximize Power Output to ISS. Miller. Sarah. January 18, 2013. Nature World News. April 6, 2018.
  66. News: Optimizing the ISS solar arrays, a Python solution to the NASA Longeron Challenge. Zimmer. Sylvan. February 6, 2013. Sylvan Zimmer's Blog. April 6, 2018.
  67. News: NASA Asks The "Crowd" To Help Track What Astronauts Eat. Burke. Adrienne. February 26, 2013. Forbes. April 6, 2018.
  68. News: TopCoder Teams with NASA and National Geographic Emerging Explorer Albert Lin to Create a Powerful Algorithm that Identifies Human-Built Structures in Genghis Khan's Homeland. September 12, 2013. CISION. PR NewsWire. April 6, 2018.
  69. News: Calit2 Research Scientist Albert Lin Teams with TopCoder, NASA. Ramsey. Doug. September 13, 2013. CHEI. April 10, 2018.
  70. News: Asteroid Data Hunter Challenge. March 17, 2014. NASA. April 6, 2018.
  71. News: Asteroid Data Hunter App. Solar System Exploration Research. Virtual Institute.. April 6, 2018.
  72. News: NASA Offers Cash Prizes for Help Hunting Dangerous Asteroids. Wall. Mike. March 11, 2014. Space.com. April 6, 2018.
  73. News: Nasa Asteroid Data Hunter contest hopes humans will outsmart dinosaurs. Dredge. Stuart. The Guardian. April 6, 2018.
  74. News: NASA taps massive coding community for deep space solutions. Otto. Greg. August 12, 2014. FedScoop. April 6, 2018.
  75. News: NASA Is Contest-Sourcing Solutions to Its Deepest Problems. Teitel. Amy Shira. August 10, 2014. Motherboard. April 6, 2018.
  76. News: Name NASA New Free-Flying Robot and Win $1,000!. October 16, 2014. Applied Technology Institute. April 6, 2018.
  77. News: NASA Plans To Deploy These Crowdsourcing Projects In Space. July 8, 2014. Fast Company. Fast Feed.. April 6, 2018.
  78. News: NASA hosts "Quest for Quakes" data challenge. July 27, 2015. Phys.org. April 6, 2018.
  79. News: NASA High Performance Fast Computing Challenge. Gee. Sue. May 8, 2017. I Programmer. April 6, 2018.
  80. News: Faster Supercomputer! NASA Announces The High Performance Fast Computing Challenge. Williams. Matt. May 5, 2017. Universe Today. Space and Astronomy News. April 6, 2018.
  81. News: NASA Wants Your Code! Boost Supercomputer Software Speed and Win $55,000. O'Neill. Ian. May 8, 2017. Space.com. April 6, 2018.
  82. News: NASA Issues a Challenge to Speed Up Its Supercomputer Code. October 1, 2014. NASA. April 6, 2014.
  83. News: NASA Cancels its High Performance Fast Computing Challenge. Murtha. Maureen. June 16, 2017. NASA Tournament Lab. April 6, 2018.
  84. Web site: NASA International Space Station RFID Localization Challenge. September 27, 2018. NASA. September 29, 2018.
  85. Web site: NASA International Space Station RFID Localization Challenge. Topcoder. September 28, 2018.
  86. News: Topcoder provides employment opportunities for US Military veterans. December 18, 2017. Computer World. April 8, 2018.

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