2011 UDM/Ford Innovation Contest

Are you a creative person full of ideas?
Do you like to tinker with new concepts?
Do you think wireless communication and computing is cool?

Now’s your chance to become an award-winning innovator!

Enter your team in the 2011 UDM/Ford Innovation Contest to develop innovative technical ideas related to the automobile. The contest tasks you to identify current opportunities with existing vehicles as well as possibilities that arise from emerging technologies to develop proposed innovations to the automobile. You only need to develop the concept – not do the detailed engineering. There is no cost to enter and travel to UDM is not required!

Each team—comprised of 3-5 full-time undergraduate students from any major— must develop a 3 minute digital video communicating the problem addressed and the team’s solution. There will also be several required process gates with intermediate deliverables; teams must pass these gates to remain active in the contest. Interdisciplinary teams are encouraged.

Contest Requirements Include:

Register your team by 5:00 pm EDT Monday, September 19th. Each team must consist of 3-5 full time undergraduate students from any major and all members must be in good standing through the duration of the contest. All teams must also list a faculty point-of-contact (who is encouraged to mentor the team) from their institution.
Participate in an introductory kick-off presentation tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, September 20th, 6-9 pm EDT. Participation may be either in-person at UDM or via Wimba. At least one team member from each team must attend (live or remotely) unless alternative arrangements are made in advance.
All team members must sign and electronically submit an intellectual property agreement by 5 pm EDT on Friday September 30. The IP form can be found here.
Several intermediate deliverables and coaching sessions will be required. Details on these will be provided later. Failure to satisfy any of the intermediate deliverables disqualifies a team from further participation in the contest.
Develop and electronically submit a 3-minute digital video presentation of your automotive by 5 pm EST Tuesday, November 1, 2011.

This contest will be open to the first 20 teams to register from any of the schools in the Kern Entrepreneurship Education Network. The videos will be judged by leaders at Ford, a Detroit area entrepreneur, and a member of the automotive media.

Contest Prizes

The prize is money - with $2500 for the winning team, $1500 for 2nd place, and $1000 for 3rd place. Winners will be announced at UDM’s Ford Innovation Symposium on Thursday, November 3, 5-7 pm EST, Fountain Lounge, McNichols Campus, UDM. Alan Mulally, CEO, Ford Motor Company, will be the keynote speaker at the Symposium. All teams are welcome at the Symposium but need not be present to win. The Symposium will be broadcast over Wimba for those who cannot attend in person.

Registration Information

Registration must be done online before 5:00 p.m. EDT on Monday, September 19, 2011. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.

Kickoff Webinar Information

The kick-off presentation on September 20th at 6:00 pm EDT will be done using Wimba - a distance education platform. To connect, you will want to:

Verify your computer's capabilities/setup by running the wizard at http://udmercy.wimba.com/wizard/launcher.cgi?wc=wms
Click on this link to join the webinar (it will be available at least 30 minutes early): http://udmercy.wimba.com/launcher.cgi?room=_udmer_s__9544_1_529477 On the Welcome screen, choose "Participant Login," enter your name(s) and school, and click on enter. You should then be taken to the webinar session.
If you will be participating in the kickoff remotely, download these videos ahead of time since they do not play very well over Wimba in real time. You will be given time during the kickoff to play each video when we come to it in the presentation. firstvideo secondvideo thirdvideo fourthvideo fifthvideo sixthvideo dryerase 2010winner
If you have any difficulties, email Jonathan Weaver at weaverjm@udmercy.edu with a phone number that you can be reached at.

Archive from the 2011 Kickoff Webinar

The online kickoff event was archived in two parts. The links for the two parts are below. It does not appear the video camera content was archived - so when videos are being shown during the archive, just pause the archive, watch the correspondng video (see links above), then return to the archive. The archive files are large - so be patient!

2011 Kickoff Archive Part 1 of 2

2011 Kickoff Archive Part 2 of 2

Mid-Contest Deliverables and Coaching Sessions

Several intermediate deliverables and coaching sessions will be required. Details on these will be provided during the kickoff event. Failure to satisfy any of the intermediate deliverables disqualifies a team from further participation in the contest.

Contest sponsored by University of Detroit Mercy and Ford Motor Company.

If you have any questions about the contest or any issues registering please contact Jonathan Weaver.

Instructions for Submitting your 2011 Contest Videos

Here are the instructions for submitting your 2011 UDM Ford Innovation Contest videos:

All videos must be submitted by NOON EASTERN on Monday October 31, 2011. There is absolutely no tolerance in the timeline for late submissions!
Video submission must be done via a private YouTube submission with jmwatudm (Jonathan Weaver’s account) and (FemisFordChannel) (Femi Osunfisan’s account) being the only two users that your video is shared with.
Video length must not exceed 3 minutes (including any transitions, credits, etc).
Remember that the video must be the original work of the students submitting it, and must have been done for purposes of this contest.
Make sure the video clearly lists all your team members first and last names. Also please list all team members in the 'Message' area when you share it (Don’t forget to hit send).
Once your video has been received, either Femi or Jonathan will send a confirmation email to all team members (with a cc to the faculty contact). If you believe your team has submitted your video but did not receive the confirmation email please call Femi 313-758-9972 AND email Femi (femi@assitiverobotics.com) and Jonathan (weaverjm@udmercy.edu) before the due date/time. (Hence it is suggested that you submit the video early enough to allow time if an issue arises.)
Judging (which is not open to the students) will be held on Tuesday, November 1, and the winners will be announced at the Ford Innovation Symposium on Thursday, November 3rd (commencing at 5:00 pm Eastern).
The symposium should be available live via Wimba for those of you not able to attend in person. The Wimba link is: http://udmercy.wimba.com/launcher.cgi?room=_udmer_s__9544_1_529477
We plan to show the top five videos during the Innovation Symposium. We hope all teams will be able to feed a live video of their team via Wimba. As we show the top five videos we will try to also briefly show a live video of each of those teams via Wimba.
In case we are not able to get the live video feeds working properly, we encourage each team to submit a second video that, in about a minute, shows the team and lets each team member identify himself/herself and his/her major. If you are able to create such a video, please share it via YouTube in the same fashion as for your contest entry.
We look forward to seeing your entries!

Congratulations to the Winners of the 2011 UDM Ford Innovation Contest

The 2011 winners were announced during the Ford Innovation Symposium on November 3rd, 2011. For the second straight year, technical difficulties led to a disappointing Wimba session. We were completely set up two hours ahead of time and passed numerous audio tests perfectily. When the event began, we had no audio to the Wimba computer. We were unable to trace the difficulty, so I connected a local mic to the Wimba computer - but the audi was terrible. The event was recorded, so I will post a link to the recording here when it is ready.

The top five teams were:

First Place ($2500 plus a trophy plus individual certificates): Saint Louis University Team Nelson (faculty contact: Sri Condoor)

Patrick Andrus, Robert Caruso, Andrew Nelson, Becky Mitrovich & Geoffrey Potts LINK TO TEAM NELSON'S VIDEO (FLV FORMAT)

Second Place ($1500 plus a trophy plus individual certificates): Villanova Team De Luca (faculty contact: Ed Dougherty)

Nick DeLuca, L. Ryan Hughes, Brandon Orr & Javier Sevilla LINK TO TEAM De LUCA'S VIDEO (FLV FORMAT)

Third Place ($1000 plus a trophy plus Individual certificates): Villanova Team Krotowski (faculty contact: Ed Dougherty)

Laura Krotowski, Monica Maschue, Daniel Knapp & Antonio de la Mata LINK TO TEAM KROTOWSKI'S VIDEO (FLV FORMAT)

Fourth Place (honorable mention): UDM Team Steen (faculty contact: Darrell Kleinke)

Wesley Steen, Mike Chiandussi & Matt Nedwicki LINK TO TEAM STEEN'S VIDEO (FLV FORMAT)

Fifth Place (honorable mention): UDM Team Gilsenan (faculty contact: Nassif rayess)

Joseph Gilsenan, Lourdes Guerra & Kevin Cunningham LINK TO TEAM GILSENAN'S VIDEO (FLV FORMAT)

Congratulations to the Winners of the 2010 UDM Ford Innovation Contest

The winners were announced during the Ford Innovation Symposium. We had about 110 live guests plus many of the off-campus teams joing via Wimba. I apologize for the technical glitches that affected the Wimba session (such as the two campus wide power outages as we were preparing and the difficulty getting J Mays' slides loaded properly into Wimba). I hope the Wimba session was still valuable.

You can see all the contest entries that were submitted (nine videos plus one PowerPoint) by dowwnloading a zip file containing them here (be patient!). The videos that exceed three minutes were judged based on a 3 minute slice of the video. The winners are revealed in these slides that were shown during the Symposium. The top three teams were:

First Place ($1000 plus a trophy plus individual certificates): Lawrence Tech

Taylor Manuilow and Chris Nichols

Second Place ($500 plus a trophy plus individual certificates): Villanova (1 of 3 Villanova teams)

Scott Rogener, Daniel Xavier Rosato, Jeetsingh Bhujun, Yazid El Hilali

Third Place (Individual certificates): Milwaukee School of Engineering

Ian Ashton, Matthew Wirtz and Charlie Scanlon