This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
During a bit of insomnia one night a few weeks ago, I checked on my twitter timeline, where I can catch some tweets from those awake across the Atlantic, to find someone had referenced a new contest that wants to reward a talented videographer for creating a new video to replace the controversial video from the European Commission's initiative to encourage girls to consider science, Science, It's a Girl Thing.
As you recall, this was the original teaser video, taken down after much uproar.
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I contacted Curt Rice, who came up with the idea for a new contest to search for a more appropriate video for the EU Commission's initiative. He still believes the entire initiative to attract girls to science is a great one (as do I) and also thinks that the teaser video concept is an effective one, but perhaps there should be one that represents real science and real women in a less controversial way.
He shared this information from his website:
This contest is co-organized by the European Science Foundation. Nobel Prize winner Brian Schmidt (Physics, 2011) has made a donation so that there will be a cash prize.
The contest is for you! There are cash prizes! Join and win!
The winning videos will be shown at the European Gender Summit 2012, November 29-30 at the European Parliament in Brussels.
Here’s how it works:
1. Visit the Science, It’s a Girl Thing website to familiarize yourself with their goals.
2. Create a one minute (or less) video designed to drive traffic to the site and create awareness for the project.
3. Upload your video to YouTube and include the hashtag #sciencegirlthing in the description, and tweet to @CurtRice with a link to your video. I’ll promote your videos on my blog and on Twitter. (Please check back to the contest page before you upload; ESF is considering making a dedicated YouTube page for the contest entries.)
4. Encourage people to “like” your video on YouTube. The one with the most likes on November 28th, at 12 noon Central European Time, will be one of the winners and will be shown at the conference.
In addition to identifying one winner through “likes” on YouTube, there will be two more winners. Read on!
5. There will also be two more prizes given. These will be determined by a panel of judges at the European Gender Summit. The European Science Foundation will assemble the panel of judges.
6. All three winning videos will receive a cash prize of 1500 euros!
Read more here.
Best of luck!