The great Pacific garbage patch is still out there. I like this passive solution (https://theoceancleanup.com/technology/). Maybe plastic taken from the ocean could be processed and incorporated into the plastic-removal mechanism to make it more effective. I think everyone would feel grateful if you even tried to solve that problem.
Ask HN: What are problems that enterprising college students could solve?
11–20 of 68 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are problems that enterprising college students could solve?
#12The great Pacific garbage patch is still out there. I like this passive solution ( https://theoceancleanup.com/technology/ ). Maybe plastic taken from the ocean could be processed and incorporated into the plastic-removal mechanism to make it more effective. I think everyone would feel grateful if you even tried to solve that problem.
Don't get mixed up in that crowd op. theoceancleanup is mostly just a pr stunt. Some young kid got popular support for a bad idea and now he's doubling down on that bad idea for fear of being pilloried for wasting 6 years and millions of dollars on a dud.
Re: Ask HN: What are problems that enterprising college students could solve?
#13Take your "too broad" problems and break them down suck that at least a part might be doable within the allotted time frame. People, especially young women, spend tons of time doing laundry around the world. Doing laundry in a time consuming and manual way keeps them from attending school, which makes them unable to rise out of poverty. This is a big issue. Will you solve the issue of how time consuming it is for peo…
Sounds weird, but someone actually did exactly that
Re: Ask HN: What are problems that enterprising college students could solve?
#14This sounds like a problem in your community: a large group of people every year trying, probably often failing, to find concrete ways to actually help out.
Go out and interview folks running non-profits, research labs, churches, health clinics, legal clinics, schools, anyone else who fits into your colleges definition of "community around us".
From those interviews, build a large list of project-sized problem/solution statments for future groups of students. Include skills needed, points of contact, possible adoption challenges, etc. Validate those project descriptions with the people you interview.
Identifying and describing problems that need to be solved and what it means to solve them is something lots of people build careers around
Re: Ask HN: What are problems that enterprising college students could solve?
#15Find ways to get college-age students involved in government (local, national, etc), especially voting.
Young people are a large, yet chronically underrepresented demographic. Just because it's true now doesn't mean it'll always be.
Re: Ask HN: What are problems that enterprising college students could solve?
#16The best help young, inexperienced, energetic folks can be is to follow someone who is aged, experienced, and lacking bandwidth. Romantic notions aside, young people are not particularly equipped to lead, and would do better to watch a leader work for a while instead of trying to dive in themselves.
Go find a group that actually has a mission and help them, rather than searching for a problem to solve. Plenty of animal shelters, churches, and soup kitchens would love a group of hands to help.
If your program specifically requires you to lead something, create a program to coordinate causeless volunteers with organizations that need them.
Re: Ask HN: What are problems that enterprising college students could solve?
#17You should do brainstorming sessions with your team where you diverge and then converge.
What I mean is:
1) get a white board/wall, post-its, and markers.
2) have everyone, independent of each other, write ideas on post-its and put on the wall. Don't judge ideas, just put them. Lots of them. Don't put your names on the ideas.
3) when you literally run out of steam, which could be a couple of hours later or even more, as a team start discarding ideas that don't make sense or work for your team.
4) you may have to do this a few times so that you get a feel for the process.
In the end you should have some really good ideas that you as a team have agreed upon.
Re: Ask HN: What are problems that enterprising college students could solve?
#18Social media is in need of a major upgrade. A team of designers (as in user experience and information design) and programmers could work on new patterns for social media. You could use Hacker News as the test subject. Challenges you may consider:
1. excessive influence of amateur opinions ( I'm not a doctor, but let me tell you what I think about treatment for acute renal failure -- this gets upvoted to the top )
2. astroturfing (are praises within the comments section really just insiders shaping the narrative?)
3. considerate, alternative points of view are buried at the bottom of the comments section
4. moderator biases
Re: Ask HN: What are problems that enterprising college students could solve?
#19Find ways to get college-age students involved in government (local, national, etc), especially voting. Young people are a large, yet chronically underrepresented demographic. Just because it's true now doesn't mean it'll always be.
Adding to this, understand the difference between long term success and short term project success. The SAT, college, future big co employers, have taught all of us how to achieve ephemeral results that grant bonuses or other validations but do little to nothing to help the world we live in. When trying to improve youth voter turnout, think instead why the efforts made have failed so drastically despite tens of thousands of individuals going around with clip boards since the ‘70s...
Re: Ask HN: What are problems that enterprising college students could solve?
#20Turn to the nearest problem that you see, that you have a strong drive to solve.
This world needs refining.
Everything in order at home? On your street? In your neighborhood? Your City? Your State? Your Country?
Here in Africa we have plenty of issues needing attention.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Development_Goals
Personally I was introduced to the poor standard of early childhood development in my city by a friend, and since then we have built 3 schools. Just in my immediate area, there are around 40 that need attention, and across the country of South Africa there must be thousands. The cost of a simple building to handle part of the problem is around $25k. Another problem we face is high unemployment, so we pay people from the community to help build the schools.
Lack of access to quality education, skills and funding are the challenges we face.
A lot of research still needs to be done on extent of the problem. I have been dreaming of an app that maps all of these ECD centers and rates them on various metrics, like quality of education, building, and nutrition. An app that would allow professionals who would like to give their time a list of options of places that need their help. Like crowd funding, but for skills. An app to allow the greater community to see, engage and solve the most pressing problems around us, all over the world.
Also and app like Uber or Airbnb, but for artisans and skilled contractors, with similar rating systems.
There are many crowd funding sites, but it’s time to go deeper and actively seek out and solve issues.
https://www.designindaba.com/tags/joe-slovo-west-community-p...