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Ideas Happen - an idea contest sponsored by Microsoft

April 10, 2003

"Ideas Happen gives 18-29 year olds an opportunity to launch an idea by pitching it to win $25,000." It appears to be a collaborative effort of Microsoft and Visa. As you might imagine, the rules contain clauses such as "Entrant unconditionally assigns and transfers to Sponsor all rights, title..." There will be 12 winners.

I'm intrigued by a majority of the entries so far. Many of the initial submissions seem implausible (Voice for the Speech Impaired - "I will put a small camera with a computer microchip in a shoe. This microchip will be programmed to record movement of hands. These preprogrammed movements will be converted to sentences, which will be aired through a speaker attached."), nice but uninspired (My Greatest Wish - "If i have $25,000 I'll sponsor my 19 years old sister to come to the USAand get an education"), or self-centered (Illustrated Story Trip - "With $25,000 I would buy a laptop computer, digital camera, and a car. In my free time I would explore the beatiful state of California taking pictures along the way").

Some of the more recent ideas are quite good (Small Beginnings - "In Ghana, two self-sustaining public libraries in the town of Akatsi, the village of Keta could be fully developed with this funding." - followed by sturdy research; I'll bet she wins). The quality of the initial entries versus the more recent entries leads me to believe that some of the earlier ones were made up by Microsoft and Visa to get the ball rolling.

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