Great Global Hackerspace Challenge Ups Entrants to 30

When the Great Global Hackerspace Challenge was announced, contest curator and hackerspace legend Mitch Altman said that there would be ten spaces selected from the entrants. However…

I didn’t know how to choose which hackerspaces could participate. I agonized over how to pick only 10 out of all the cool spaces who emailed me. How to choose? I was only given enough resources to pick 10. I got back to the folks at Element14, letting them know that it wouldn’t be fair to exclude all but 10 of the hackerspaces. After only a short while, we all agreed, and the people at Element14 decided they would provide the resources for all submitting hackerspaces to participate!

Here are the deets on the contest:

Your hackerspace will create a project to help with education, using US$900 (or equivalent) provided by Element14. The project must use a microcontroller and a portable power source.

– You have 6 weeks to complete your project, documenting your project as you go. All spaces that complete their project will receive 10 soldering setups.

– Three hackerspaces’ projects will be chosen as finalists to present at the Grand Finale at the San Francisco Maker Faire. All three of these spaces will receive some really nice electronic test equipment. One person from each space will be flown out to present their project at the San Francisco Maker Faire over the weekend of 21-May & 22-May, 2011.

– One project will be chosen at the Grand Finale at the San Francisco Maker Faire to receive some extra goodies, including a very nice oscilloscope.

Good luck to all the spaces that entered, though I have to say my home team, the Hack Factory, has a killer idea that founding president Mike Hord thought up, and it will be hard to top.