IDEA Awards Reception

Hah! It IS happening, I promise. And SOON- see below!

For a few weeks, we’ve been holding our breath, hoping that the latest economic recession wouldn’t prevent us from hosting a nice awards reception. And now we’ve finally gotten the OKAY to host this. All entrants will be receiving invites- especially you finalists! You better be there! Lots of awards to give out, lots of networking and socializing to be made.

The Short:
What: IDEA AWARDS RECEPTION
Where: Yale Visitor’s Center, 149 Elm St.
When: Wednesday, April 22, 2009; 7:30 – 9:00pm
Who: IDEA entrants and friends
Why: To recognize all the outstanding entries! And to give out awards!

Welcome back, students!

Just wanted to give a shout-out to students coming back from spring break. No worries, we held down the fort here in New Haven. We’ve even got 1st- 3rd places figured out. WhooHoo!
Now, just got to nail down more specifics about the Awards Reception on April 22nd. Time, TBD, but I imagine it would be in the evening. Location, TBD, but it’ll be on-campus. Dress, TBD, but I imagine you’d want to look your best for an awards ceremony!

Finalists Announced!

A happy Spring Break to all the students out there! We hope you’re able to spend those 2 weeks somewhere warm and sunny. Meanwhile, those of us working on the contest are still in New Haven, holding down the fort.

We are so proud to announce the finalists of the IDEA Contest. Each of the categories below has a winner, who will be announced at the IDEA Reception on April 22nd (details to follow soon). Check out our prizes page to see what the category winners will receive! Congratulations to all the finalists.

Art Category Finalists
Mary Reid Kelley – The Queen’s English [link]
Noa Kaplan-Sears, James Pollack – Digital Diving
Ely Kim – Seen [link]

Business & Entrepreneurship Category Finalists
Yingqi Gu – Qashe [link]
Christopher Bartley – The Cubiverse [link]
Simon Tao (group)- Auto Keep-In-Touch [link]
Arun Gupta (group) – Wakesmart
Elliot James Rapp – LiKiRi Learning Services [link]

Sustainability Category Finalists
MJ Truong – Eco Crafts: Bottlecap Earrings [link]
Haley Gilbert - East Rock Park: Inside & Out [link]
Robert Casey, Rich Littlehale – TwigTek / YouRenew.com [link]

General Category Finalists
Julian Kantor – Groov [link]
Sanjay Basu – Nyayahealth Wiki (Open source public health) – [link]
Leon Noel – List Full Of Hope [link]
Jianye Lu – Yale Campus Criminal Events on Google Map [link]

Unfortunately, there were no finalists in the Education Category due to lack of entries in that category. Maybe next year?

Judges from all categories will be meeting next week to determine the overall 1st, 2nd and 3rd prize winners. (Check out our prizes page to see what 1st- 3rd prize winners will win- besides prestige, of course!)

Congratulations again to our finalists!

Finalists determined.

If you submitted an IDEA entry and you haven’t heard from the judges of the contest, today should be it. The Art  and Sustainability Contests won’t have formal interviews- the 2nd round interviews are at the discretion of the judges. They can whittle down the entries to the three or four finalists and then determine a winner without the extra interview. Business & Entrepreneurship and the General Contests are having 2nd round interviews, and those interviews should be concluding this coming Friday.

We keep hearing from all the judges that this year’s entries are far and away the best they’ve seen. Many thanks again to everyone who submitted. We’re going to throw a party (we call it a reception for formality’s sake) for everyone near the end of April (date, time and location TBD) where we recognize all the entries, call out the finalists and announce the winners in each category and then the overall 1st, 2nd and 3rd Prize winners.

Updates on the party will be posted here as well.

Determining Finalists!

After a week of deliberation, we hope to have our judges determine all our finalists. What a tough contest this year! First off we had over double the entries from last year. Secondly, it seems that Yalies are getting more and more innovative in the digital sphere. This is excellent and exciting!

Okay, so entrants can expect an e-mail of yea or nay by tonight at the latest. So exciting, no? Either way- all the entries were ridiculously good. I actually have no idea how we’re going to pick just a few out of so many.

Also, everyone will be invited to the IDEA Reception: to celebrate your innovative ideas and the 2nd successful year for IDEA. This is where all entrants are recognized, finalists are announced and the winners are revealed. (The awards will be more along the lines of the Academy Awards or Grammys, where finalists are told ahead of time and the winners are announced and awards awarded on the spot. Oh, the suspense!)

Contest Closed & Judging Begins

Wow. The contest is now closed and we want to send out a big THANKS to all who participated! I can tell you definitively that this year we received over double the number of entries from last year. The aim of the contest is to discover and reward creative digital projects created by Yale students… and it certainly seems that we’ve discovered some amazing digital projects this year. And now, we get to work on the part of the contest where we reward students for their hard work and creativity.

Today the judges will be receiving the IDEA entries, and they will have the week to review and deliberate. Barring any unforseen obstacles, we hope to notify callback finalists by the following Monday or Tuesday (February 16 or 17). We want to be sure that the judges have enough time to review, so if there are any delays, we will use this blog and the homepage of ideas.yale.edu to notify participants. Check back for news and info on our progress.

FINAL DAY of the IDEA Contest

Today is the FINAL FINAL Deadline for the Yale IDEA Contest!

The form will close at midnight tonight, so that gives you students… a little over 14 hours to get your finished entries in. We could count down the hours, but quite frankly, we’ve got entries to sort and e-mails to reply to. Maybe check our twitter for some random counting down as the day progresses.

Please send any extra materials to our e-mail address (ideas@yale.edu), or if the files are too large, please send them through the ITS File Trasfer Utility. If you want to hand in a CD or DVD, please e-mail us so we can direct you to the right drop off point.

::deep breath:: OK! LAST DAY!

Extending the Contest deadline was a good IDEA.

… the word “idea” shall henceforth be written in all caps.

It seems that the deadline extension for the Contest was a good IDEA. We’re still getting entries. It seemed that the deadline was a bit early in the semester, and word about the contest didn’t really spread before the winter vacation. Ideally- and this will be something we’ll improve upon next year- we wanted to alert students about the contest before the break. That way you could get started thinking up IDEAs for your entries early and have time over the break to work on essays, projects, etc. When y’all started heading home/ on vacation, we were still polishing up the contest descriptions and parameters.

All things considered, we’re really pleased at how many entries have already come in for the Jan. 30th deadline. Hopefully, the extended deadline will allow others the time to submit essays and projects and allow those who have already submitted entries to submit any extra materials they want.

Once again: questions and comments welcome- ideas@yale.edu

HOLY EXTENDED DEADLINE, BATMAN!

YES, it’s true! In a stunning and exciting move, the IDEA Contest deadline has been extended for one week! Huzzah!

The deadline for entries is now: FEBRUARY 6TH! We sincerely hope that this altered deadline will allow you students to tweak, finalize, and polish up your entries. We’ve already received so many excellent entries- and we would love some more!

If you think of any questions over the weekend, please e-mail us! We welcome your questions!

Entering the contest as a team

You may wonder what to do if you’re entering a team in the Yale IDEA contest. First off, choose one person to represent your group in an entry. In the essay answers for the submission form, indicate the names team members. You can also just add this as extra notes at the bottom of one of your essays.