Crowdsourcing to Determine Winners of New Digital Media Contest

New innovation contest will help fuel the growth of Utah’s digital media industry and deploy crowdsourcing to highlight exciting companies, products and ideas.

The Utah System of Higher Education (USHE) recently announced a $25,000 digital media innovation contest that will award $5,000 cash prizes to five Utah-based companies. The awards will go to the companies whose proposals garner the most online votes from the general public.

Contest applications are currently being accepted online at www.saltvalleytally.com. The deadline for entries is August 30, 2012. To qualify, companies must be legally incorporated in Utah, have less than $1 million in annual sales, and be developing a not-yet-commercially available technology.

“This contest arises from the Utah Cluster Acceleration Partnership project in digital media that Utah Valley University convened in 2011,” said David Buhler, Commissioner of Higher Education. “It is one of the ways we’re delivering on the plan to attract and grow digital media companies.”

Technologies applicable to the contest include mobile and web applications, video games, film, 3D animation, special effects, and digital audio. Companies are limited to one contest application.

The real fun will begin when the approved applications are released to the general public for voting between September 10 and October 9, 2012. Voting will be open to anyone who wants to participate by simply logging onto the website, where they will be able to vote for their favorite technologies.

“Digital media lives and dies on the response of the market. We are excited to use crowdsourcing to capture the wisdom of the market in determining which digital media innovations are most deserving of the cash prizes,” said Steven Roy, Associate Vice President of Economic Development at Utah Valley University and USTAR regional technology outreach director. “This crowd voting process is inclusive, and we invite everyone, whether living in Utah or not, to vote on the applications starting in September.”

The five applications with the highest number of votes will be announced as the winners of the five $5,000 cash prizes on October 10, 2012. An awards ceremony will be held in October and the winners must be present at this ceremony to receive their cash prizes.

According to the 2011 UCAP report “Accelerating Utah’s Digital Media,” Utah’s digital media cluster employs more than 1,500 workers and its businesses have direct annual revenues exceeding $415 million. More than 40 percent of these jobs are in the video gaming sector.

For more information on the contest, visit www.saltvalleytally.com.

For more information on UCAP, visit www.higheredutah.org.