Thank you - I don't disagree with you, honestly though, the overhead of trying to manage those separate entities will quickly outstrip the time and ability the volunteers who are evaluating and managing this process have.
If a given company feels it is lacking in any single area, I encourage them to include other specialists in that area as part of their bid - for example, if they're awesome back end designers, but can not do front-end design, I would expect them to find a trusted designer to work with them as part of the bid.
Even though this effort is funded, the management of it, the evaluation of the designs/etc is all volunteer based. We can not chase multiple contractors :(
That said, the design people/firms I spoke to about this seemed to understand this and stated they would do as I outlined above.
If a given company feels it is lacking in any single area, I encourage them to include other specialists in that area as part of their bid - for example, if they're awesome back end designers, but can not do front-end design, I would expect them to find a trusted designer to work with them as part of the bid.
Even though this effort is funded, the management of it, the evaluation of the designs/etc is all volunteer based. We can not chase multiple contractors :(
That said, the design people/firms I spoke to about this seemed to understand this and stated they would do as I outlined above.