Maybe a different way to look at this would be to come up with some sort of incentive for authors to create different types of basic examples that could demonstrate various use cases for xel. That might draw in some outside groups to take a look at xel to see what it is capable.
That would seem possible as a contest, if giving out prizes to such as the top 1 or top 5 submissions. Each submission would show working code in the Elastic programming language, while finding and demonstrating an use case where Elastic exceptionally exceeds other alternatives on something particularly useful.
(Presumably the niches of Elastic are where it has much increased performance on some problems, compared to a single personal computer, while being a lot cheaper and more conveniently accessible for many users than a conventional centralized supercomputer).
Judging the most useful and best submissions would be tricky, but a small panel of several people volunteering as judges might make a reasonably fair attempt, if each judge had some reputation and expertise (again, probably drawing from universities).
Since that metric of success is somewhat subjective, perfect judgment may be impossible, but it does not have to be perfect, as long as competitors feel the judging is decent enough to take part.
After all, there have been contests elsewhere which are even more subjective (such as awards for top artist submissions, or top engineering concept designs).