10,000 Solutions Showcase to highlight cross-section of innovation
The 10,000 Solutions platform will be marking its one-year anniversary by celebrating some of the top innovative solutions submitted to the website. The project was launched just over a year ago as an effort to fuel the power of collaborative imagination to create solutions to issues.
The project seeks input from the ASU community and the public for solutions to the world’s greatest challenges on topics ranging from education to technology and from health to human rights. In that year, 10,000 Solutions was able to collect more than 2,200 solutions. The solutions are varied, ranging from ideas to encourage healthier lifestyles to bringing back a popular song to Sun Devil football games.
Twenty solutions teams will be featured at and be competing for up to $15,000 in cash prizes at the 10,000 Solutions Showcase on Tuesday, Oct. 9. The prize money will be spread out amongst three awards: a Grand Prize Award of $10,000, a Crowdfunding Challenge award that will match raised funds up to $3,000, and a People’s Choice Award, selected at the event, worth $2,000.
The event also will feature a keynote presentation from Jaime Casap, Google Education Senior Evangelist. Casap will speak about the intersection of technology and education, and also how Google is able to turn ideas into a reality – a fitting topic for many of the budding entrepreneurs on the solutions teams.
The 20 finalist solutions teams were selected from the solutions uploaded over the previous year and represent some of the most innovative ideas from the platform. One finalist team, Vantage Realized, is developing a customized wheelchair designed to prevent injuries and physical ailments that often afflict long-term manual wheelchair users. The team is currently competing for Entrepreneur Magazine’s 2012 College Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Flash Food, winner of Microsoft’s Imagine Cup in the United States, is working to reduce food waste. A newer team, Bright Evolutions, is developing a mobile phone app to help travelers make healthy food choices, while also donating to permaculture projects.
For more information on the 20 finalist teams, you can see their original 10,000 Solutions postings, here: http://10000solutions.org/tags/10kshowcase.
The 10,000 Solutions Showcase will be in the Arizona Ballroom in the Memorial Union on Tempe’s campus. The event will begin at 6 p.m. To get more information about the event and to RSVP, visit solutionsshowcase.eventbrite.com.
Media contact:
Daniil Gunitskiy, dgunit@asu.edu
810-394-1744