GrabCAD Community User Group

I think regular small challenges are a great addition to this site. The issue seems to be how to announce them?
The current "Bike Accessory Challenge" sounds interesting, but unless someone were to go to the Challenge tab, how would they know it was ongoing?

Idea 1:
I'm not sure how many people make it over to the Blog tab, but maybe create a blog post when a new challenge is created? Maybe it could just be a little back story on how the challenge came to be?

Idea 2:
Take a look at the "Tab Bar" at the top of most pages (I'd post a picture here if I could). I'm looking at the Groups link right now and it has a cool "NEW" flag added to it. Maybe there could a flag posted to the Challenge tab when a new challenge goes up?

Idea 3:
A site wide notification or message could be sent. Chances are it would be ignored by a majority of people, and it may also be lost in the daily notification noise as well, so I'm not sure that is the best idea.

Idea 4:
Some sort of unified "homepage" for the site. In general I really hate homepages on sites like Yahoo (and others), they are just too busy and distracting. Reddit does a decent job because all of the content on the homepage is simply the most recent content from the groups you are subscribed to. Arstechnica does a great job of keeping the main page clean as well.