FIRST & Dow Chemical "Shape the Future" video contest (vote daily this week)

[ngreen]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

This contest has started to definitely annoy me a bit as most of the entries are either entirely scientifically inaccurate, impossible, or are just mini chairman's videos and have nothing to do with the competition. The competition has to do with only votes so it'd just a matter of who has a bigger team and Facebook following. Since we do not have either we will inevitably lose. It's shame that students on our team spent weeks researching ways to make a better water filter and actually came up with something never done before only to be taken out by a Nyan cat video with Shape the world at the end (note said nyan cat video doesn't exist). Not really thinking through the whole voting thing I hoped we could pay to do our first second regional next year but I guess we will have to find a different way.

At the end of the day you learned something, and that beats Nyan cats any day. You may have to work harder (and smarter) to make that second regional but you'll be ahead and better than any of the teams relying completely on lazy work.

I hope my team doesn't fall in that category, but we found this contest and made our video very last minute. You can tell some put more or less thought into it. TBH that isn't my peeve so much as re-using an unrelated video or not even trying to answer the question asked. I'd love for them next year to award the top 4 in votes and top 4 based on quality criteria to encourage on topic content.

We'd pay for a second regional likely with the grant. And I don't know if we'll gain enough votes to compete with bigger teams.



I did enjoy 461's video. I'm anti-(malaria,dengue,west nile,zika) but also anti-(mosquito genocide), and hope a CRISPR-like modification will eventually diminish the global virus threat from them.