Create the Future Design Contest

The Create the Future Design Contest was launched in 2002 by the publishers of NASA Tech Briefs magazine to help stimulate and reward engineering innovation. The annual event has attracted more than 5,000 product design ideas from engineers, entrepreneurs, and students worldwide. The 2007 competition set a new record, with nearly 1,000 entries. Presented by SolidWorks Corporation, this year the contest is co-sponsored by COMSOL, Hewlett-Packard, and National Instruments.

Contest begins July 7, 2008 and ends October 17, 2008. We must receive your entry by 11:59 pm ET on October 17, 2008.

Six categories:

* Consumer Products: Products that increase quality of life in the workplace, at home, during leisure time, or while traveling.

* Machinery, Equipment and Component Technology: Products that speed and improve work, manufacturing, or scientific research processes.

* Medical Products: Products that improve the efficiency and quality of healthcare.

* Safety and Security: Products that enhance the security or safety of individuals, businesses, communities, or nations.

* Sustainable Technologies: Products that help reduce dependence on non-renewable energy resources, as well as products designed for other purposes using environmentally friendly materials or manufacturing processes.

* Transportation: Products that enable movement of people and goods from one place to another.

BIF-4 Collaborative Innovation Summit

Each year, BIF Summit offers a limited number of full and partial scholarships to students, young entrepreneurs and community development professionals. The BIF-4 Collaborative Innovation Summit on October 15-16, 2008 in Providence, Rhode Island.

Now in its fourth year, the BIF Collaborative Innovation Summit has earned a national reputation for its unique storytelling approach to an event that has been described as more conversation than conference. BIF-4 will bring together many of today's most compelling innovators, business model renegades and true transformers to reveal the secrets of innovation success through personal storytelling.

International Development Design Summit

International Development Design Summit IDDS is dedicated to using technology to design simple yet efficient solutions for problems in the developing world. The web for IDDS 2008 is now available.

The Economics of Being Green

e2 examine the economies of being environmentally conscious in green building design of sustainable architecture. e2 highlights the positive impact sustainable architecture has on the economy, health and the planet. The series is narrated by Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt and features the most progressive minds in the green building and sustainable design movement including Werner Sobek, William McDonough, Sergio Palleroni and Michael McDonough.

Development Lab MIT

Christian Science Monitor: Amy Smith's workshop is far from cutting-edge. There are no next-gen computers, no vials of polysyllabic chemicals, no fancy equipment. The space is decidedly low-tech – and that's the point. D-Lab students pinpoint practical problems in the developing countries and then brainstorm and build solutions.

Invention

Annals of Innovation: Who says big ideas are rare?, The New Yorker, May 2008.

Small inventors, beware. You’ve got to be crazy to be an entrepreneur. You’ve got to be even crazier to be an inventor. Patent reform could change things, but opportunities abound in the nascent intellectual property marketplace. VentureBeat.com. April 2008.

Community-Driven Networks

Community-driven networks, providing a range of telephony, ICT and media services, and based on a hard-headed business plan, is a new concept that for the first time can be backed up with emprisal experience on the ground.

Community-driven networks are emerging in Asia, Africa and Latin America, in which the community itself initiates, owns and runs an enterprise to provide low-cost telephony, internet access and local service development.

The business model takes full advantage of low-cost IP technologies, maximizes the value of community resources, builds on service development partnerships with local authorities, e-government and private sector, and incorporates empowering activities such as community radio and video.

Telecoms regulators are collaborating in several of the pilots, to develop technology-neutral and horizontal licenses, open access approach to bandwidth, and innovative ways to address poor communities.

This approach is also in line with empowering approaches to the provision of other services, such as water, electricity, irrigation and resources management.