We anticipate many entries for the X PRIZE Exploration Video Contest to arrive near the final deadline of April 10, 2012.  But if you submit your entry on or before February 15, you’ll be eligible for early selection as one of the four overall contest finalists, before the contest even ends! Also, the next ten submissions that get accepted into the contest by February 15 will receive a limited edition X PRIZE t-shirt.

Remember, it’s not about high-end cameras or high production budgets: it’s about your personal exploration as told in a short video. X PRIZE is looking for heart felt answers to the question “Why do YOU explore?”

The grand prize is a $10,000 National Geographic expedition of your choosing. Plus three awesome prizes for finalists.

Act now while the numbers are in your favor, tell X PRIZE why YOU explore. Check www.iprizeexploration.org for contest details.

Thanks and good luck!

For inspiration check out Ryan Van Duzer’s entry “Live. Bike. Explore”:

WikiCG is the brainchild of Ward Cunningham (extreme programmer extraordinaire, bicycle commuter, popular tweeter, and inventor of the wiki) who traveled (via plane, not bike, to save time) from Portland to work with CitizenGlobal last year, and who continues to advise us from a distance. His idea is to expand wikis from text-only to all types of media, especially video.

The result has been some pretty awesome videos! A few of our favorites include “The Descent at White Eagle“  (ghost hunting at a Portland hotel), “Suomenlinna 2.3.2011” (paragliding along a snowy shore in Finland), “Steven the Sand Surfer” (sand surfing in Colorado), and “Starboard Paddlesurf” (paddle surfing up close).

Check out our new interface and watch the callout video featuring Ward. And then… contribute your own content!

We’d love your feedback on the new interface and on WikiCG, so please send us your comments, criticisms, and suggestions. Post here or write us at help@citizenglobal.com.

Erika Wagner, Senior Director, Exploration Prize Development at X PRIZE

This morning, I found my 18-month-old dancing on the dining room table.  I had turned my back for just a moment to chase his 3-year-old sister around the house on a mock zoological expedition, when he scaled my chair, climbed up onto the table, and proceeded to celebrate.

Why do we explore?  Parenthood has taught me that the urge to push frontiers is written into the most basic levels of our DNA.  From the moment they can roll over, kids are off in quest of new adventures, new information, and new challenges.  As they become more agile, every couch is to be scaled; every puddle is to be forded.  In the oft-quoted words of British mountaineer George Mallory, they explore simply “because it’s there.”

I would love to invite all of our young filmmakers out there to grab a camera and share your explorations.* What takes you to the edge of everything familiar and then one step further?
What do you hope to learn, or do, or see there?

Why do YOU explore?

* Yes, it’s true, you have to be 18 to enter our contest. Younger filmmakers must enlist an adult to help with their entries, and the adult will receive any prizes on their behalf. But collaborations are welcome!

Please visit the StopAmericanCensorship.org website and the EFF’s Aniti-SOPA Toolkit to learn more and to take action to stop this potentially disastrous legislation from becoming law.

Here are a few things to do:

- Help get the word out: Post your opposition on Facebook, Twitter (hashtag=SOPA) & your blog.

- Contact your congressperson: Made easy here.

- If you work on the Internet, upload your photo here to show your opposition (takes 2 minutes).

The figure of claimed corporate losses due to online piracy currently stands at $200-250 billion, though such is merely a number being tossed around to justify the need for SOPA. As Steven Colbert pointed out, this number is completely bogus. While no one is in love with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), it provides an essential Safe Harbor and allows companies like YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Itsy, Vimeo and CitizenGlobal to exist. Without it, these companies could be held legally responsible for every bit of infringing content uploaded by their users. While we at CitizenGlobal oppose piracy and take great care to block and remove infringing content from our site, it is simply impossible to remove every bit of it, all of the time. SOPA would effectively overturn the DMCA, leaving us (along with many other companies) with massive lawsuits we could not afford to litigate.

One million Americans have emailed Congress in opposition to SOPA; countless companies and organizations including EFF, ACLU, and over 100 intellectual property law professors are actively opposing the bill; and tech giants like Facebook, Google, Twitter, eBay, Yahoo, AOL, Mozilla, Zynga and LinkedIn have sent their formal opposition in a joint letter. Please join us all in opposition to censorship and control and help promote the continuation of a free and open Internet.

Watch Steven Colbert discuss SOPA and host a debate between Danny Goldberg & Jonathan Zittrain on the topic.

It features our OccupyThanksgiving initiative, and music by Makana, the young musician from Hawaii who sang We Are The Many, the quickly-becoming-a-classic Occupy folksong, to Obama and other world leaders in Hawaii last week. Distribute widely!

Steven Starr

Erika Wagner, Senior Director, Exploration Prize Development at X PRIZE

When I joined the Exploration Prize Group here at the X PRIZE Foundation, I asked my friends and family to name their favorite explorers: James Cook, Jacques Cousteau, Alan Shepard.  Time and time again, people named great explorers of the past. (And mostly DWGs at that: Dead White Guys.)

But every day in my job, I was working with incredible innovators and explorers who were operating at all sorts of modern day frontiers.  Exploration, from where I stood, was clearly NOT a dead pursuit.

In fact, I think the quest for new frontiers is an absolutely critical part of what it means to be human. Today, in an era where we are growing faster than ever as a species, expanding our knowledge of our world and our universe is critical to our survival. Exploration is a modern day imperative.

For me, exploration is about more than adventure, more than feats of derring-do.  It is about the ways in which frontiers reveal new things about our world and ourselves.  It’s about the ways in which standing at the edge of all we know forces us to innovate in ways that the safety of our own couches never will.

In the words of JFK: “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.”

That’s why I prize exploration.

Why do you?

iprizeexploration.org

Photographer George Steinmetz explores the Arabian desert via paraglider. Watch!

Joe Capra captures the midnight sun of Iceland in his remarkable video. Watch!

So What do YOU explore? X PRIZE urges ALL explorers to participate by creating and posting a video. So where do YOU explore? Hiking the canyons, walking the shores, peering through a telescope, digging through sandstone? It could be a block from your home, a ferry ride across the bay, a 1,000-mile trek through the Andes. And even more importantly, why do YOU explore? The challenge, the pursuit of the unknown, the satisfaction of searching and maybe finding, the adventurous solitude or camaraderie; express whatever it is that drives you to get out there. It’s not about expensive equipment and Hollywood cinematography – it’s your personal vision that X PRIZE is after.

From left to right: Lisa Ling, Jodie Evans, Concepcion Lara, Sharon Lawrence, Susan Cartsonis

This past weekend, Concepcion Lara (CG’s consultant for CitizenGlobal Espanol!) spoke on the panel “Women, Media and Power: Stories from Emerging Voices” at the Green Festival. The panel was hosted by Lisa Ling of OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network), and the other panelists included Susan Cartsonis, producer and WIF Foundation chair; Jodie Evans of the Women’s Media Center; and Sharon Lawrence, the Actress and WIF Foundation Advisory Council Member.

In addition to speaking on the panel, Concepcion promoted CG’s Univision Muestranos Tu Halloween! production and took videos of children in costume and of preparations being readied for the Day of the Dead holiday, which is today. Check out the fun, scary, and lovely Halloween and Day of the Dead videos.

Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers was also at the Green Festival and stopped to admire a Day of the Dead tribute to Cesar Chavez. Watch it here:

Feliz Dia De Los Muertos!