Subject: [gaia] Mozilla Launches Equal Rating Innovation Challenge: A $250, 000 contest including expert mentorship to spark new ways to connect everyone to the Internet

From: Arjuna Sathiaseelan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2016 08:05:33 +0100

Mozilla Launches Equal Rating Innovation Challenge: A $250,000 contest
including expert mentorship to spark new ways to connect everyone to the
Internet

Mozilla calls upon innovators to challenge existing approaches; Submissions
open on November 1st

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, October 17, 2016/ -- Mozilla (www.Mozilla.org)
announces the launch of its global Equal Rating Innovation Challenge, a
competition which invites contributions on ways to provide unfettered
access to the open Internet for anyone across the globe. As part of its
initiative, Mozilla is asking entrepreneurs, designers, researchers and
innovators to propose creative and scalable ideas for connecting more
people to the Internet, built on local knowledge and expertise.

The Equal Rating Innovation Challenge will support promising solutions
through expert mentorship and funding of US$250,000 in prize monies split
into three categories - Best Overall (based on scalability), Best Overall
Runner-up and Most Novel Solution (based on experiment with a potential
high reward).

“At Mozilla, we believe the Internet is most powerful when anyone –
regardless of gender, income, or geography – can participate equally.
However, the digital divide remains a clear and persistent reality,” said
Mozilla’s Chief Innovation Officer, Katharina Borchert, in a blog post
<https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2016/10/13/> (http://APO.af/LzcShp).
Further, she says, “This challenge is designed to spur innovations for
bringing the members of the Next Billion online. The Equal Rating
Innovation Challenge is focused on identifying creative new solutions to
connect the unconnected. These solutions may range from consumer products
and novel mobile services to new business models and infrastructure
proposals.”

Mozilla has launched www.EqualRating.com <http://www.equalrating.com/>, a
website offering educational content and background information to support
the challenge. In the coming weeks, Mozilla will also stream a series of
webinars stream to further inform potential applicants about the challenge
details.

Katharina Borchert added, “Connecting the unconnected is one of the
greatest challenges of our time. No one organization or effort can tackle
it alone. We must come together and collaborate to build innovative and
scalable ways to bring Internet access to the Next Billion - and the other
billions, as well.”

Submissions are open from November 1, 2016 to January 6, 2017 and will be
judged by a group of external experts. The first round of selections will
be announced by mid-January 2017. Selected finalists will receive
mentorship for their projects before they demonstrate their ideas in March
2017. Final winners will be announced by end of March 2017.

Interested innovators can submit their ideas
<https://equalrating.com/submission-form/> (http://APO.af/yPgEVx) and
contact [email-masked] for further details.

-- 
Arjuna Sathiaseelan
Personal: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~as2330/
N4D Lab: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~as2330/n4d