discussion / Community Base  / 7 February 2017

Sign up to participate in Make for the Planet during the Earth Optimism Summit

Do you plan on being in Washington, D.C. over Earth Day weekend? Join Conservation X Labs and teams of hackers, coders, makers, engineers, designers, entrepreneurs, creative thinkers and tinkerers to celebrate Earth Day weekend 2017 by creating solutions to challenging conservation problems in front of a global audience. Multidisciplinary teams will compete in an on-site event called Make for the Planet over three days of the Smithsonian's Earth Optimism Summit in Washington, D.C. (April 21-23, 2017). Equipment will be available to create prototypes and models of hardware and/or software solutions to specific conservation problems. Space and registration is limited! Visit this LINK and apply to participate no later than March 1, 2017 (midnight EST).

More information --- 
The Make for the Planet conservation technology competition is focused on finding creative solutions for the planet. Fifteen teams of 4 will be invited to compete, create, and pitch their innovative solutions & prototypes to a crowd of potential supporters. Teams will also have access to the Earth Optimism Summit - there is no restriction on age, discipline, geography, or occupation. The selection process will be highly competitive, and we encourage potential participants to form multidisciplinary and diverse teams that bring together engineering, conservation science, social sciences, and other disciplines. Teams will have access to problem sets two weeks before the event, access to leading conservationists and innovators during the event, and access to equipment on site to create prototypes and models of hardware and/or software solutions. Teams will compete for cash prizes (currently $5,000). The currency of your ideas matter more than who you are. We encourage multidisciplinary teams since innovation tends to happen at the boundaries. At Conservation X Labs, we believe in the power of ingenuity of humankind. Make for the Planet builds on an aspect of optimism – the range of solutions and technologies that are in diverse fields can be applied to greatly improve the efficacy, speed, cost, scale and sustainability of conservation efforts.




Hi Barbara, 

This looks like a fantastic event, thanks for sharing it! Do you have a sense yet of what sort of problems participants are going to be tackling over the event? 

Are you a DC wildlabs member and keen to attend? It'd be great to hear from you in this thread so you can connect to each other before the event.. shout out below. Maybe we could get together a WILDLABS team to compete?! 

Cheers, 

Steph  

Hi Steph,

Great question. Teams will get to select problems in 4-6 conservation themes (e.g. oceans, climate, food, invasive species, etc.) as the inspiration for their solutions. Teams will receive the themes and problem statements 2 weeks before the event. On the first day of Make for the Planet, experts in the themes will kick-off the event by pitching the problem statements.

I hope to see a number of WILDLABS teams apply! I can answer more questions here, too.

Best,

Barbara

 

This sounds fantastic! Am based out of San Diego but could potentially travel in and would be interested to join a WILDLABS team if there's one in the making.