Source:
Google Video Shutting Down; Rescue Your Orphaned Videos Before 5/13 - How-To Geek ETC

Coming Soon: EPA’s 48-Hour Burn Wise Video Contest Help protect your community from wood smoke pollution

Release date: 03/11/2010

Contact Information: Dave Ryan Ryan.Dave@epa.gov 202-564-7827 202-564-4355

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is sponsoring a video contest for professional and amateur filmmakers on Burn Wise, the agency’s campaign to help citizens reduce pollution from their fireplaces and other wood-burning appliances. With the theme “Learn Before You Burn,” the winning 30- or 60-second videos will promote responsible wood-burning techniques that can help citizens save money while making the air healthier to breathe.

Wood smoke is made up of a mixture of gases and fine particle pollution that isn’t healthy to breathe iidoors or out – especially for children, older adults and people with heart disease, asthma or other lung diseases.

Each video must cover three basic steps: what to burn (only dry seasoned wood), how to burn it (maintain a small, hot fire) and what to burn it in (an EPA-approved wood-burning appliance that you have maintained each year). For the safety of the filmmakers, no real flames may be used in the videos.

Anyone can enter (children under 18 must get parental permission). Winners will receive cash awards, and their videos will be provided to television stations as public service announcements. Prizes are as follows: first place, $2,500; second place, $1,000; third place, $500 and viewers’ choice, a $250 U.S. Savings Bond.

Here’s how the contest will work: Some information is available to help filmmakers get started right now on the contest Web site. Then, at noon EST Friday, April 9, EPA will reveal three mystery criteria that must be included in the videos on the contest Web site. Final videos must be uploaded to EPA’s YouTube channel within 48 hours -- by noon EST Sunday, April 11. Viewers will vote on their favorite video via YouTube.

Informational video and more on how to participate in the contest: http://www.epa.gov/burnwise/contest.html

For updates on the contest, follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/epaburnwise

I understand the safety issues, but the "fairness for all girls" is a stretch. I understand not everyone has access to technology or resources, but it seems like a shame to hold people back in the idea of fairness. Countries, organizations, and people that are willing to try things for the benefit of everyone rather than waiting for everyone to try it will move forward in today's society.

The concept of "nano" has captured the interest and excitement of researchers and science-enthusiasts alike, but the question remains - what is "nano"? How is "nano" best visualized? Where is "nano" headed? Send us your ideas in the form of an original creative video and you could win $500 in cash!

Video submissions will be accepted from January 5 - March 15, 2009. Videos are limited to 3 minutes or less, and will be judged on creativity, scientific clarity of explanation, originality and quality of the video. Entrants are encouraged to submit their videos early, since early submissions will have the best chance to accumulate a greater number of votes.

It is catchy. (Does that make me a nerd?)

If you talk to anyone associated with one of my activities, I focus the discussions on people rather than the tools. I show the tools and the students play, but we also come back around to the user of the tool on the other end of the 'net. The tools come and go with no rhyme or reason, but the pull of people is driven by specific needs and desires! I feel for librarians and information professionals to be equal partners in the new web phenomena, we must understand the human drive or addiction to the social web.

I have seen the first talk/presentation/movie that really highlights the points I try to make. I am sure this video collaboration led my Dr. Michael Wesch does it much more eloquently than my attempts.

Anyone that wants to understand the viral nature of the web must watch this presentation. It is almost an hour but it beats any prime-time reality TV show I have seen recently.

By the way...
He talks about "gaming the system" where the middle frame of your video becomes the thumbnail that everyone sees. After watching this movie, you have to ask yourself did he purposely use the kids to drive traffic? Hmmm?

I thank Bill Claspy my colleague in the Kelvin Smith Library for making sure on added this to my consumption of everything web 2.0.

It also created a video on YouTube to promote it.

CALL FOR ENTRIES
SPARC Announces Mind Mashup:
A Video Contest to Showcase Student Views on Information Sharing

Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales and Documentary Filmmaker Peter Wintonick Among Judges Selecting $1,000 Prize Winner

Washington, DC - July 25, 2007 - SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) today announced the launch of the first annual SPARC Discovery Awards, a contest to promote the open exchange of information. Mind Mashup, the theme of the 2007 contest, calls on entrants to illustrate in a short video the importance of sharing ideas and information of all kinds. Mashup is an expression referring to a song, video, Web site or software application that combines content from more than one source.

Consistent with SPARC's mission as an international alliance of academic and research libraries promoting the benefits of information sharing, the contest encourages new voices to join the public discussion of information policy in the Internet age. Designed for adoption as a college or high school class assignment, the SPARC Discovery Awards are open to anyone over the age of 15.

Contestants are asked to submit videos of two minutes or less that imaginatively show the benefits of bringing down barriers to the open exchange of information. Submissions will be judged by a panel that includes:

• Aaron Delwiche, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas
• José-Marie Griffiths, Professor & Dean at the School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Rick Johnson, communications consultant and founding director of SPARC
• Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC
• Karen Rustad, president of Free Culture 5C and a senior at Scripps College majoring in media studies
• Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia
• Peter Wintonick, award-winning documentary filmmaker and principal of Necessary Illusions Productions Inc.

The contest takes as its inspiration a quote from George Bernard Shaw: "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."

Submissions must be received by December 2, 2007. Winners - including a first-place winner and two runners up - will be announced in January 2008. The winner will receive $1,000 and a "Sparky Award." The runners up will each receive $500. Winning entries will be publicly screened at the American Library Association Midwinter Conference in January 2008 in Philadelphia and will be prominently featured in SPARC's international advocacy and campus education activities.

For further details, please see the contest Web site at http://sparkyawards.org.

SPARC
SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), with SPARC Europe and SPARC Japan, is an international alliance of more than 800 academic and research libraries working to create a more open system of scholarly communication. SPARC is a founding member of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, a coalition of patient, academic, research, and publishing organizations that supports open public access to the results of federally funded research - including research funded by the National Institutes of Health. SPARC is on the Web at http://www.arl.org/sparc/.