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Category Archives: X PRIZE Exploration
Tell X PRIZE “Why YOU Explore” By Feb 15 & Get a Jump on the Competition
And an exclusive X PRIZE t-shirt!
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”:
Ladies, Gentlemen, and Explorers of All Ages…
Guest Blogger Erika Wagner, Senior Director, Exploration Prize Development at X PRIZE:
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?
* 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!
Why Explore Exploration?
Introducing guest Blogger Erika Wagner, Senior Director, Exploration Prize Development at X PRIZE:
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?
