Prize Money Logistics
Here, we'll talk about how much exactly we would like to award, and how we'd like to award it. We could have first, second, and third place prizes, one large prize, or put some of our money towards bringing some folks to SGC to receive the award.
What are some ideas about this? I'm a fan of having prizes for runners-up to encourage competitors. I don't think that we should be offering less than 1000 USD for any one of the prizes. There should be, with this award, the potential to give clubs a well-needed boost in funding.
I definitely think there should be multiple prizes, especially since the contest covers a broad area, and I think we will have a very "close race" for the top spot. My suggestion is a grand prize and a couple or few runner up or honorable mention awards. Possibly bring the Grand Prize winners to SGC.
If we do invite the winners to SGC, how many get to come? Some groups will only have a few members, making it possible to bring the whole team, but others groups may have 20 or more participants.
I think the name on the check should be the name of the club or organization. Every university sponsored club I know of is required to have an account (with the univ or with a private bank) with the club's name on it (and usually needs multiple signitures to withdraw). Many universities (in the U.S. at least) require sanctioned clubs to use a university account.
For organizations that don't have a named bank account, one would think that if the executive of the club used a personal account (one with his/her) name on it, the bank would be used to cashing checks with the name of the organization.
Brian
Brian
I definitely agree with this discussion in term of giving out many prizes to encourage competition and participation. It reminds me of those cereal/candy bar prizes I thought I could win as a kid, where there were about 30 different runner-ups. Grand prize and about 3-4 runner ups would be good.
Perhaps we can also do some sort of newsletter or book listing every participant's name and recognizing everyone and send it out to the schools. We could perhaps describe a couple the winning projects and mention a few others, so that we can recognize all of the efforts put in.
Also, two people is a good number to bring to SGC for the grand prize winners, if we want to do that.
I agree with Aaron about the number of people to bring to SGC as grand prize finalists - maybe the Chairman & Vice of the group? Encouraging participating by recognizing more than one group in the competition is a big deal I think.
Is anyone concerned with the number of participants we will receive initially? Maybe down the line after sorting out logistics, we ought to address how we'll "advertise" for this prize. Whether we're contacting universities & other conferences directly (ISU, IAC, etc), or reserving a large spot on the SGC website after the conference, if people don't know about the prize, the logistics won't really matter.
I think 30 winners may be a little much (unless they all get a water-proof clock radio for the prize), but I like the idea of posting winners (and honorable mentions) in a publication of some sort. We could also put projects worthy of mention that did not receive a cash prize.
In response/addition to Keithe. . .
(As an engineer) I see it being fairly easy to rally participants in the science/engineering community, but it may be a little more difficult to get very many "non-engineering projects." Getting plugged in the AIAA or IEEE or newsletter should not be much of a problem, but how do we reach high-school students, or students that are not involved in science/engineering?
I definitely see where you're coming from about being able to easily reach our fellow engineers/scientists, Brian. Our target audience has not exactly been defined yet, if we even want to target specific groups. Engineers & scientists with an enthusiasm for space may be more interested in outreach than non-space buffs which is why we may want to reach out to them first.
It is undoubtedly important to leave this open to anyone that wants to participate so in that way, I think WE need to be the ones to get the word out, via our own outreach.
I've mentioned DoSPACE in other forums - a spin-off of InspireSpace from SGC 2005 in Fukuoka, it's a grassroots effort that raises awareness about space by bringing one-shot presentations to local classrooms or teaching a space class at highschools. This way, at the end of the presentations, (if the participants of SRS are interested), we can plug this award and say listen, here's the deadline, here's our contact information. We'll have them give us their email addresses and consistently remind the students that they should pursue this.
Now that being said, with lessonplans, posters, business cards and PowerPoints done (contact me for any of them), are highschool students not the ones we want to motivate with these outreach efforts of the award applicants?
In other words, should we be focusing on college students just because they have access to highschools and elementary schools whereas the highschool students only have (comfortable) access to middle and elementary schools? Thoughts?
Personally, I think as many people as we can reach with this the better; their age doesn't matter. And if we are presenting at these schools, expanding the DoSPACE effort then we can easily plug for the award - killing two birds with one stone.
Sorry so long!
I seriously think that setting a limit or any kind of delimiter in that sense can hamper the scope of the very basic need of the program we are promoting... I see most of the participants in this forum are from the developed countries, and atleast the outsiders have a feeling of them being very resourceful. I hope that no one would take this as a negative comment. I am part of an non government organization that works for promotion of awareness about astronomy and space in general among the youth, specifically in the age group of 12 to 16 (grade 7 to 10). I myself was introduced to it as a student participant and there are lots more like me who once get "overaged" are more than willing to get around as volunteers to work along with the new students.
I wanted to stress on a point that you might feel to neglect. I wanted to put that its just not the school children but a larger part of the society we need to address when we have a issue at hand which needs people being aware. That part, friends is the family. I was very happy to see Keithe teaching a high school class, I just wanted to ask what kind of feedback do the children's family give to them about the course. I mean in India atleast I have been through experiences like a parent coming out and taking their children home when we had a partial solar eclipse going out...and to go further they actually asked the school authorities, for what good in this world do their children need to stand under the sun when its eclipsed. Funny indeed it might sound but that kills the potential and enthusiasm of the that student as well as some fellows. This is largely due to the far reach of superstitions in the average Indian household and the mindset that nothing "pays" well enough except being a doctor or an engineers. India does have a major chunk of the youth population in the world and I sincerely hope that they be well informed of the choices future offers them and where else better than the SGC, and that too in India itself! Honestly speaking, I might not have considered to participate if this would have been an event hosted outside India ( economics involved ;-) ), but now I know for sure that I would have regretted missing it more than anything that might happen next.
The thing most important in here irrespective of the prize is that we need to device ways in which we can bring together such clubs and activities. I have helped setup an amateur astronomy club in my college and we do as much within our resources and a bit over it. There a lot of other such self financed and completely student supported activities around but the basic problem with them is non uniformity in approach and obviously lack of organization. Although its good in a sense that they lack the second part but there must be a proper channel through which any one could help any other in more than one ways. SEDS might offer a solution to it but again it needs much more people to know about it, as it crossed me in one of our forums, someone asked what is SEDS!! There can be no one way to standardize how we measure the work done. I personally feel that instead of being just objective we should rather be interested in the impact of the work in the particular social and geographical context. Anyone with any suggestions, please free to hit back here or through the email.
I am really sorry for such a long post and for not being context specific in this forum, but I am not able to be online so often, so had to do it in one shot... thanks again !
hey vish_av,
I'm not sure if this is your major point, so correct me if I'm wrong. You are saying that it will be difficult to judge the prizes based on the diversity of knowledge and resources of the groups? That is to say, underpriveleged groups will be competing against MIT-like students for the same grand prize. I agree with this. It might be difficult to discern the winner given that shift.
I think that our overall goal is to get participation from as many as possible. That being said, we need to give proper recognition for deserved efforts. Do we want to split up the prizes - perhaps not necessarily having 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc... but give certain prizes titles... a prize for achievement in technology, achievement in innovation (perhaps not these, but something like it)... Otherwise, we can just "reach out" to groups who are underpriveleged by giving them personal attention - perhaps some speakers and people to inform them, in lieu of a grand prize, per se.
That's my two cents.
--Aaron
--> Aaron
sorry for being late...but thank you so much for imploring on the point. Its precisely what I wanted to put forward and ur suggestion is the same solution i had been thinking upon recently...
With view to the different categories we can have for the prizes, I think we should rather have the application process divided itself...a common information related part followed by a multiple part subjectively formatted essay/report different for each award...i realize that it might be a bulky job altogether but we would have a much clearer view of the perspective of people who want to be a part of this thing.
Hope it helps...
btw the name is amit vishwas...ur pick :P
Hi everyone. What we're going for with SRS is to try to get groups that exist to do space outreach, or to inspire folks to create groups based on space outreach. Always keep this goal central. There are too many forms of outreach to neglect one for another.
Aaron, it seems like you're going down a vein of technical ability of a club to compete. The SRS prize is going to be awarded to the group that best teaches and inspires, so MIT should be on a level playing field with everyone else lots of times really intelligent folks have trouble communicating, so a strong education and/or engineering background isn't necessarily gonna win you the prize.
Vish (can I call you that??). I agree with not setting limits on scope, but perhaps boundaries and prize categories need to be discussed. After all, space science outreach can be done at a high school, but space artwork can be done with little kids. Should these be in the same prize category?
I hope in a few paragraphs, I've added some insight about what we're gonna be about here. If anything, KEEP DEBATING. I'm busy defending a Thesis this week, but I'll be able to facilitate discussions more easily soon.
hy frank (btw...love that space suit of urs), can call me watever u feel comfortable with.
coming to the point the thing about people being at equal status is how much exposure they have, telling people effectively what you do, how you feel about it... is itself an art(i hope u agree). I have been trying to insist on the fact that we only need to inspire people to feel the way we do and catch up with those who feel the same but are not informed of an activity like this. To make a difference between a (so called) Ivy or similar group and a group, say in some part of Africa or Asia, we wont need anything more but a mere look across their work. When people work in good strength, resources and wholesome support from all around the community they are ought to produce much more significant results. "Significance" here would be how we would see it on paper. However a comparatively smaller breakthrough might be of much more importance in far difficult circumstances. As what we are looking for is future, we need things that break into the tougher shell now, so that we can find the easier part of work later.
That is why I suggested use of visual media in applications... a picture is worth a thousand words...right!! Also we need not merely intelligent people to convince, inspire and bring in other people who are ignorant to space to the same league..we need people who have good communication skills, personality and who can overall interact well with people. I think you can figure out who/what does it better :)
best of luck for ur thesis..n just wanted to say we all have suggestions (i hope) not debates/arguments...so cheers. We'll make through with the best things we can for the best that we can do !
do tell me which nickname u chose for me :P
Excellent points, my friends. I'm excited to get into this and eventually see the outcome.
I just finished the semester and sadly I am in the heart of studying for finals and haven't been able to be too active lately. In a week or so I'll be back in full. Time is running by so quickly these days...
--Aaron
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