Finalists Named in the Juicy Ideas Competition

ASHEVILLE, N.C., May 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Teams from six colleges and universities across the country have qualified as finalists in the 2010 Juicy Ideas Collegiate Competition, a national contest designed to engage young adults in entrepreneurism and encourage innovation and creativity.

The competition challenged students to create a software application that uses publicly available data to benefit their community. It was organized by Advantage West, the economic development group serving Western North Carolina, with support from Google and in partnership with DigitalChalk, developers of an online software platform for training and continuing education.

Finalists are from Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College in Asheville, N.C.; Canada College, a community college in Redwood City, Calif.; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge; Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.; the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Washington in Seattle. The winning team will be announced June 1.

Schools within 50 km of a Google U.S. data center or corporate office were eligible to compete. The Juicy Ideas winning team will be awarded an all-expense-paid trip to Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

Teams of three to five students researched publicly available data to create their software application. They submitted their entry via a YouTube video, which will be evaluated based on the ability to disseminate public data in a relevant manner; potential for community impact; usability; creativity, innovation, and uniqueness; business potential and scalability; and effectiveness of video demo.

This is the second year for Juicy Ideas, though the contest has changed significantly since its start in 2008. The original competition focused on the environmental and entrepreneurial challenge of creating value from a throwaway item. The winning team, from Appalachian State University, in Boone, N.C., crafted a working bicycle from plastic water bottles - an idea that continues to be developed through business connections the students have made as a result of their winning entry.

While the 2010 competition still centers on innovation and creativity, the concentration on software and data aligns well with the core concentrations of DigitalChalk and Google, said Matt Dunne, Community Affairs Manager at Google. "We knew we were significantly raising the bar by piloting a different approach this year. Students not only had to demonstrate their creative spirit, but needed the computer programming know-how as well."

SOURCE Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College

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