Last February, I was the uber-happy community winner of the SilverlightShow Eco Contest. I got a chance to learn about Silverlight 4 and Windows Phone 7 first hand at MIX10, attend cool activities and parties, build new geeky connections and even become a SilverlightShow representative to support them promote everything Silverlight! A few weeks ago, SilverlightShow announced the Eco Contest for 2011. United Nations has declared 2011 as the “International Year of Forests” to raise awareness and strengthen sustainable forest management. To join the worldwide efforts for a greener future on our planet, SilverlightShow chose “forests” as the contest theme.
The Eco Contest ends on March 6th, 2011 – 11:59PM PST. So there are 18 days left for participation. To speed up your action plan, here is a a quick collection of links:
- Navigate to the contest page
- Get excited about the prizes: MIX11 pass, accomodation in Mandalay Bay/Las Vegas, Telerik RAD Controls
- Check out the official rules : contest objective, categories, participation dates, prizes, judges, winner selection criteria
- Take a look at current contest entries: why is your app still not among them?!?
- If you have any questions, drop SilverlightShow a line
- Don’t wait any longer; join!
As a sidenote: I designed this year’s contest site and I will also be one of the judges.
Are you excited about the Eco Contest, just need a kick-start to form an original idea or come up with a mind-blowing concept for your app? If that is the case, you should definitely check out the resources page shared on the contest site. You can also get inspired by the contest entries from last year.
While doing my design research for the contest website as well as my project research last year, I have collected a few resource links too. Not all information is directly related to forests; some provide ideas about green living, calculating our eco footprint, eco-statistics for countries, nature conservation etc. Yet, I hope that there are some useful pointers, that fuel your imagination plus act as a guide in the vast sea of resources that is out there.
Gapminder World: http://www.gapminder.org/
Gapminder provides statistical tools with up-to-date content on global trends. The data is presented as time series and is freely available in Gapminder World and Gapminder Countries. For example, in the data tab, you can check out forest coverage changes in countries over time.
Footprint Network: http://www.footprintnetwork.org
The Footprint Network’s goal can be simply stated as measuring human impact on the Earth so we can make more informed choices. This site provides the Ecological Footoprint tool – a resource accounting tool that measures how much nature we have, how much we use, and who uses what. The interactive features of the “Footprint Calculator” are pretty interesting.
Carbon Neutral: http://www.carbonneutral.com.au/
Carbon Neutral provides many services aiming to reduce and offset greenhouse emissions, provide environmental awareness and support revegetation. You can read about biodiversity, climate change, but much better check out their carbon calculator tool, which enables you to do carbon emission calculations based on energy, food, waste, air travel etc.
Conservation International: http://www.conservation.org
Conservation International aims to empower societies to responsibly and sustainably care for nature, global biodiversity and for the well-being of humanity. You will find details about climate change, safeguarding water, food security, protecting our oceans and much more. Especially the information on “Saving Forests” may be of most interest to you.
Mother Nature Network: http://www.mnn.com
MNN is an environmental news site with broad coverage on up-to-date news on the environment and our social responsibility. You can read about eco-terms, learn more about environmental issues and check out the idea lab, which is basically a stream of ec0-resolutions. You can also find the latest news about “forests“.
Stop procrastinating! This is an excellent chance to share your Silverlight development/design work with the world, support a noble cause and eventually end up among the #MIX11 crowd! Three brilliant motivational factors at once; what else could you ask for?
Good luck to all #EcoContest participants!
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