Entrecard wins Dept. of Defense contract

Written on April 1st, 2009 by phirate

For immediate release.

Entrecard Inc. has been announced as the winner of US Department of Defense tender #DOD39582 – Automatic Motivational Techniques for Recurring Tasks.

“The essence of the problem is that life in the military involves a great deal of preparation and discipline – cleaning weapons, keeping bunks and quarters tidy, saluting anyone who went to OCS, that kind of thing.” said Captain John Majors of the Armed Forces 2.0 Taskforce.

“Traditional approaches to dealing with this problem involve hard-ass gunnery sergeants with highly trained vocal cords capable of shouting continuously 24/7, but new information from psychologists suggests that adding some carrot to the stick results in a dramatic boost in performance”.

Entrecard Inc, known for its dynamic positive reinforcement mechanisms aimed at helping Bloggers improve their visibility and social connections, was one of over a hundred contenders for the tender.

“We went into it with the approach that if we get daily requests from Bloggers to let them drop more than 300 cards at 1ec a card, surely motivating soldiers to perform duties that will save their lives will be a snap in comparison” said Entrecard founder Graham Langdon. “The hard bit was coming up with automatic – and difficult-to-cheat – mechanisms equivalent to the ‘drop’, we had to get a variety of sensors designed and embedded in weapons, bedsheets, helmets and – and this was tricky – officers skulls.”.

Entrecard’s demonstration stood out during the week-long Not-At-War Games session. “While other bidders managed some level of performance gain, Entrecards results were fascinating. For a start we got realtime information on who had cleaned what weapon when, in shiny flash charts – Generals love that shit. The troops loved it as well, they really got into building their credit balances – so much so that we had to put limits on how often they were allowed to shine their boots and get a credit or risk running out of polish!” said Captain Majors.

Not everything went perfectly however. “On the third day one of the NCOs started a poker game in the mess while we were doing a real-time presentation to the General Staff in the other room. The charts went a bit crazy, all the milcreds ended up in Private Susan Wallaces account. Apparently nobody told the rest of the squad she’s a bit of a card shark when she transferred in..” said Andy Tynefield, one of the moderation team. “We got it straightened out in the end but not before Private Wallace had managed to trade half her milcreds for a 50cal sniper rifle and a bar of chocolate.”

The crucial moment for Entrecard came at the end of the week during the final review, when a 2-star General, blinded by the sun reflecting off the boots of the test squad, stumbled into the path of a humvee and was taken to hospital. Glum Entrecard staff retreated to a nearby bar but were suprised by a cellphone call from the General from hospital later that evening. “I remember picking up the phone and hearing this gruff voice say ‘Damn boy, your squad nearly killed me with its *boots*, I can’t wait to see what they do in combat’” said Graham. “We got handed a contract by a nervous-looking lieutenant 5 minutes later”.

News of the success spread quickly and Entrecard has been inundated with queries by organizations interested in potential uses. “We got one guy from the Ministry of Transport in New Zealand who called me up in the middle of the night and started ranting about giving people credits for crossing with the lights..” said Graham.

For further information about Entrecard positive reinforcement motivational techniques, visit http://entrecard.com/ .