"Why Space Matters to the Future" Winning Videos
Three winners selected in “Why Space Matters to the Future” national video contest
“The Coalition for Space Exploration (Coalition) and the NASA Visitor Center Consortium are pleased to announce the winners of the “Why Space Matters to the Future” video contest: Addie Augsburger, Clyzzel Samson, and Elizabeth Paddock. The winning entries were selected for both their creative demonstrations of the importance of space exploration and their unique visions for the future if the boundaries of space continue to expand.”
“Winning videos will be featured on the Coalition and VisitNASA.com websites, shared through social media networks, and shown to NASA executives and elected officials in Washington, D.C.“
Now that they have all of these videos, what use are they going to make of them? The sentence above makes it seem like they’re going to be shown to a selected group of people, most of whom would probably already have seen them anyhow. Is that it? Basically, preaching to the choir?
I’m sure they’ll be on YouTube (everything is), but they’ll be drops in the ocean with nothing happening to put them in front of the eyes of people who wouldn’t normally see them, or even be aware of what they’re about or how they came to exist.
I recognize that anything promotional usually costs money, but it doesn’t always take a lot of money (for example: web link trading can even be free). I’d like to see the results of this contest spread around to people who don’t already know the score. And I’d seriously consider making it an annual contest, which is something that will get more and even better results, since creators will have plenty of notice and more time to work on them. Annual winner’s prizes need not be expensive to be motivational and there are lots of companies and agencies which, I feel sure, would be willing to donate “prizes.” Those who donate prizes each year can be “associated” with the program, a social attribute that can be useful in any company’s marketing work.
If they stop now, then it would be like having printed up a whole lot of marketing brochures and then just sticking them in a storage box and forgetting about them. This needs some follow through.
If you Google the contest name you can see that a lot of web sites, even non-space-related, were willing to post the winners names and some details about the contest (from the info provided by Griffin Communications Group), so the interest is out there. Unfortunately, a lot of these web sites, it seems, did not post or even link to the actual videos, so something more is needed.
If I’m arguing for something that’s already been planned, my apologies.
From the contest rules: “Contest is open only to residents of the continental United States.“
Is this a legal limitation? Why turn away thousands or more potential contributors, any one of whom might have been the creator of the best video of all? NASA is American, but what NASA does and stands for is a human thing, not American only.
Hmm, NASA’s wake-up song contest was open to everyone and it sure generated a lot of buzz outside the US also.