Deadline: 4 May 2020
Conservation X Labs is seeking bold ideas for technology solutions to conservation challenges. Aimed specifically at projects teams that are considering their first prototype, the Con X Tech Prize is granting 20 prototyping awards of $3,500 each to take your idea from blueprint to reality.
CXL is seeking novel and transformative tools to conserve the world’s biodiversity and end human-induced species extinctions. They will support ideas that help decision-makers, conservationists, consumers, resource managers, and policy makers understand and act on conservation problems.
The Con X Tech Prize is designed as a competition for bold, new concepts for technology-enabled solutions for conservation. Any submission should be a well-thought-out concept for a solution responding to a specific conservation problem or challenge.
For this Round of the Con X Tech Prize competition, they invite Participants to submit ideas for two different categories.
- BEHAVIOR CHANGE: CXL welcomes project submissions that propose a solution to use behavior change tactics, to create tools or products that will impact any pressing conservation challenge. These solutions should move beyond initiatives or campaigns, to propose ideas for technologies, ventures, products, or tools with behavior change at the core of their theory of change.
- BLUE SKY: Participants can submit any novel, tech-enabled conservation solution idea. Participants must identify and articulate a specific problem to which their solution applies, which will improve the quality of the submission as well as the success of the tech-idea overall.
Prize Information
Conservation X Labs anticipates selecting up to twenty (20) Finalists and awarding an initial prototyping grant of $3,500 to each Finalist team. Approximately, ten (10) prizes will be awarded to project ideas in each of the two (2) categories for a total of twenty (20) prototyping awards, though CXL reserves the right to allocate the grant awards across the two categories that results in the most impactful and transformative pool of grant awardees. After CXL awards prototyping grant money to Finalists, winners should publicly share project advances and updates on the Digital Makerspace during prototype development. Finalists from stage 1 of the competition will be able to compete for a second stage award of $20,000.
Finalists from past rounds of the Con X Tech Prize included:
- A blockchain smart contract tied to remote sensing to improve conservation markets
- An IoT sensor for farms to alert for invasive species and track their insect biota
- A deep-sea lander to capture 3D video in the deep ocean
- An algorithm to help the shipping industry halt illegal shark fin trade
- And many, many more!
Eligibility Criteria
- Unfortunately, at this time, CXL is not accepting entries or submissions from individuals under the age of 18.
- To enter, Participants must submit a project application on the Digital Makerspace, create a project profile that is shared and viewable by other members (i.e. registered users of the Digital Makerspace), and agree to the grant competition Official Rules when submitting their project to the Con X Tech Prize. An initial description and design (image, drawing, or computer aided design) of your proposed tech solution and answers to all application questions are required for submission, and should be uploaded to the project profile. Teams who already have working prototypes of their ideas are not eligible to apply, though those who want to make product pivots or substantial modifications to existing prototypes are eligible.
- The Finalists and award winners of past Rounds of the Con X Tech Prize (from 2018 and 2019) are not eligible for Round 3 (opening in January 2020). Projects that were submitted to past CXTP Rounds, but not chosen as a Finalist, are welcome and encouraged to apply.
Judging Criteria
- First Stage
- Your solution will be evaluated on eight equally weighted criteria on a scale of 1 to 5:
- Transformative Potential
- Conservation Impact
- Financial Sustainability
- Environmental Sustainability
- Cultural Appropriateness & Social Responsibility
- Feasiblility
- Novelty
- Scalability
- Your solution will be evaluated on eight equally weighted criteria on a scale of 1 to 5:
- Second Stage
- At the end of the Second Stage Prototyping Period, teams that submit the required assets will be evaluated in the following equally weighted criteria on a scale of 1 to 5:
- Project Viability (3 criteria)
- Transformative Impact for Conservation
- Financially Sustainable & Scalable
- Culturally, Socially, & Environmentally Responsible
- Value Proposition (4 criteria)
- Fit of Solution to Problem
- Team’s Understanding of User Needs
- Team’s Understanding of Solution & Market Landscape
- Future Outlook
- Prototype Progress (3 criteria)
- Progress Against Goals
- Ambitiousness of Goals
- Overall Progress of Prototype
- Project Viability (3 criteria)
- At the end of the Second Stage Prototyping Period, teams that submit the required assets will be evaluated in the following equally weighted criteria on a scale of 1 to 5:
For more information, visit https://conservationx.com/challenge/cxtech/prize3