Category archives: contest
The betacup LOVES Collaboration
Posted by Toby Daniels on Tuesday, 1 June 2010
We’re very proud and privileged to be working with a number of incredibly smart and creative folks, who are helping us bring the important message behind the betacup challenge to the masses.
Each of these pieces are designed to raise awareness around the issue and drive people towards the Jovoto contest to rate and review ideas ahead of the June 15th deadline, where the winning ideas will be chosen and awarded $20,000 in prize money. Please take a few minutes to check out, absorb and share their incredible work and also take a moment to review the ideas submitted to the betacup challenge contest.
Threadless Loves Coffee – T-Shirt Design Contest
Coffee. Delicious coffee. It’s fueled the creation of many artistic works for centuries. It’s also fueling the creation of this challenge. (Pause for a sip) One might also say that coffee has fueled the creation of Threadless itself! From early mornings to long nights, it’s always there to comfort us and keep us chuggin’. It’s time to give back, my jittery friends.
Our friends at Betacup are coffee lovers, too, but they want to reduce the number of non-recyclable cups that are thrown away every year. And so in conjunction with their Drink-In Week and idea submission contest, we’re happy to add some sweetener. In addition to the awesome Threadless loot, they’ve rounded Starbucks up to provide a $1000 gift card and a sweet recycled tumbler! You better love coffee.. a LOT!
Created by Good Day Monsters in partnership with Denuo, and Waveplant Studios
The Worldsaver
Created by Good Day Monsters & Denuo
At The Betacup, we think saving the world can start with something small. Like, say, your morning coffee. You know, that white paper non-recycleable thingie with the plastic lid and wasteful cardboard wrap around it. Yeah, that. Well, (together with Denuo, Good Day Monsters) we created something to help change all that. It’s a little something that will serve as both a reminder about every cup’s wastefulness every second, and an opportunity to create change. To make a better cup. All by starting small. With something like, say, your screensaver. Or as we like to call it, The Worldsaver.
About the creators:
Threadless is a community-centered online apparel store run by skinnyCorp of Chicago, Illinois, since 2000.
Denuo instigates, invents, and inspires new forms of creativity to solve the marketing challenges of modern marketplaces. They also love the betacup – their website even says so.
Good Day Monsters crushes digital projects 24 hours a day, from Chicago and Bangkok by night, to build killer websites, applications, and motion graphics.
The original music for 60 Seconds To Save The World was written and performed by Waveplant Studios. Run by Joel Corelitz, this personal brand is one of the top audio houses as picked by Motionographer.
Posted in: Inspiration, contest | Tagged: "good day monsters", coffee, contest, denuo, starbucks, threadless | 5 Comments
Feedback and thanks from Heidi Durham at Starbucks
Posted by shaunabe on Friday, 21 May 2010
guest post by Heidi Durham from the Starbucks™ Shared Planet™ team
It is hard to believe the betacup challenge will soon be over. The betacup team encouraged me to share some of our own thoughts about how things are progressing and what we hope to do next.We have been surprised and delighted not only by the number of ideas, but by the originality and diversity of submissions. We have seen a number of ideas we like, from incentive and reuse schemes to new types of cups. We think it will take a mix of approaches to succeed so I’d like to encourage you to continue to explore a wide range of approaches from new reusable and disposable cups to incentive and reuse schemes.
In many cases, we cannot know how well ideas will work, until we try them, so we hope to try a number of different approaches in the next 6-12 months. Many of the ideas submitted have been long standing, passion-laden ideas from a committed group here at our headquarters in Seattle. When the submission phase is over we will begin to review ideas and determine which ones we might be able to pilot.
We are excited to see the community and jury selections in the coming week. Good luck and thank you for your tremendously creative efforts.
Heidi Durham
on behalf of the Starbucks™ Shared Planet™ team
Posted in: contest | Tagged: | 7 Comments
Live from the 2010 Cup Summit: Interview with Starbucks Director of Environmental Policy, Jim Hanna
Posted by admin on Thursday, 22 April 2010
Starting Thursday, April 22, Starbucks is convening their second cup summit. In order to reach their goal of ensuring that 100% of Starbucks cups are reusable or recyclable by 2015, they’ve invited people from all over the industry to discuss potential solutions.
They’re including city recyclers, government leaders, raw material suppliers, NGOs, academic experts, cup manufacturers, and other retail and beverage businesses.
The plan is to have an open and honest discussion about the entire paper and plastic cup ecosystem. Starbucks believe waste from the paper cup can be considerably reduced if we all work together on this issue.
To encourage an open discussion among attendees, they are keeping the meeting closed. However, they want to incorporate your questions and ideas in the dialogue.
To do so, they are hosting a live chat with Jim Hanna, their recycling expert at Starbucks, and Peter Senge, senior lecturer at MIT and founding chair of the Society for Organizational Learning.
The live chat will take place at 4:00 p.m. EST on Thursday, April 22. To watch and participate, join us on our ustream channel. You can either see it above or click this link.
- To ask a question, include this in your tweet: #cupsummit2010
- Follow the commentary on Twitter here: @StarbucksLive
Posted in: contest | Tagged: cups, MIT, recycling, starbucks, summit | 2 Comments
the betacup challenge: how are we doing?
Posted by Toby Daniels on Monday, 12 April 2010
How are we doing after 1 week?
+ 65 ideas
+ over 300 comments
+ almost 30,000 views of ideas
+ almost 1,000 registrations to submit ideas
In addition, the contest has good press and is the subject of steady twitter conversation all of which is helping to move the numbers above.
But how good are the ideas?
Here are some good examples:
+ new cups – some are created from existing waste materials, some while you wait and others are designed to disappear when not in use (while also checking into foursquare)
+ new recycling or reuse options – cups can be used to distribute seed or if we had more ways to collect used reusable mugs, perhaps more people could use them.
+ new behavior – these ideas explore ways to encourage behavior to reduce or eliminate the use of paper cups.
I personally believe this last category is where the best solutions will be found (I’m not a juror, but I will be voting with everyone else for the community prizes).
One of the big changes in recycling is the cost of tracking. For example barcode scanners are ubiquitous, so barcodes can be used to track and reward reuse. In fact the cup (or the lid) can become the more valuable kind of plastic (the kind you buy stuff with).
Going one step further, loyalty card programs result in interesting data for segmenting customers for selling more stuff, but they can also be used to cause better behavior.
Beyond the ideas, we’re excited to see how the process unfolds
Because submissions are public some interesting things are happening.
+ comments – feedback is already resulting in iterations, so we think some of the submitters are benefitting and enjoying the feedback
+ teaming up – it has happend once already and there seem to be some discussions already (this is how the netflix prize was won, so this is interesting, for sure).
+ juror expert feedback – we have already seen some of the jurors weigh in with their particular expertise, so we’re looking forward to seeing how this helps submitters to identify and address prospective issues with their submissions.
We’ve just started, so why not submit an idea or encourage other people to check out the betacup challenge.
Posted in: contest | Tagged: betacup, challenge, contest | 3 Comments
the betacup challenge is live: Time to help us reduce paper cup waste!
Posted by Toby Daniels on Thursday, 1 April 2010
Today is a momentous day. After almost one year since its conception, the betacup challenge is now open for ideas and submissions via our contest platform Jovoto.
In case you’re not familiar, the betacup’s goal is find the best ideas to reduce paper cup consumption and help bring these ideas to life. Below is some more background on the initiative and a detailed task definition, which outlines how to approach the contest and specifically what to think about in regard to your submission.
Huge thanks to all our partners for helping us get to this point, including our main sponsor Starbucks, our media partner Core77 and to all our other supporters who are listed here.
Briefing
Help reduce waste from coffee-to-go paper cups and come up with sustainable solutions!
Background
The betacup challenge was founded in May 2009 by Toby Daniels and Colaboratorie Mutopo in an effort to reduce the 58 billion paper coffee cups go to waste each year. (More details on the thebetacup.com).
The project began when Toby brought up some ideas he had for a more convenient reusable cup. As the team discussed the issue, they realized the betacup might be an ideal project for a larger creative community because there seemed to be many ways to address the issue.
betacup teamed up with sponsors Starbucks, Core77, Denuo and Good Day Monsters to seek your help because they believe this is an issue that impacts so many people and that many of us may have already thought about as we go about our coffee drinking each day.
Special Features
In this contest, the betacup invites you to submit ideas, but also to comment on and rate others’ ideas, and engage in discussions with other community members and contest jurors. The jury is made up of the betacup’s board of advisors and will offer professional feedback and guidance throughout the contest.
There are two prizes: A prize awarded by the jury after the contest closes (jury prize
$10.000), and community awarded prize money for the top 5 ideas as rated by the community ($2.000)
The betacup is a Public Contest, which means as you submit your ideas, they will be visible to non-community members and people can Sign Up to comment and rate. This feedback process will help make ideas even better, so you are encouraged to submit ideas early to benefit from the feedback and improve your ideas.
Don’t have an idea? No problem, you can still help out by offering feedback to others.
Tonality
- Relevant
- Fun
- Convenient
- Useful
- Engaging
- Behavior changing
- Inclusive
Target Group
- People aged 18 to 50
- Consume multiple cups of coffee per day, away from home
- Convenience driven
- Living consciously
- Living in the city & in the suburbs
Mandatories
There are no mandatory requirements in terms of visualization or format of your submission, but keep in mind that a clear, appealing presentation and precise written description of your idea helps the community and jurors understand and rate it appropriately.
Entries will be judged on a variety of qualities, including how they reduce waste, what resources they require, new or existing capabilities for implementation, and the overall user experience.
Posted in: contest | Tagged: 58b, contest, core77, cups, jovoto, mutopo, starbucks | No Comments
Starbucks Sponsors the betacup Challenge to Spur Creative Problem-Solving
Posted by Toby Daniels on Monday, 15 March 2010
On April 1 we are officially launching an online contest to engage creative thinkers in solving the disposable cup waste problem through open collaboration.
We are especially excited to announce that Starbucks Coffee Company is sponsoring the contest as part of its aim to serve 100 percent of its hand-crafted beverages in reusable or recyclable cups by 2015.
“Finding effective solutions to the disposable cup waste problem will be a challenge – a good solution will need to include product design, communications and incentives to change consumer behavior, and work within service and recycling infrastructures,” said Shaun Abrahamson from Colaboratorie Mutopo, a group of mass collaboration specialists who co-founded the betacup. “We think this is an ideal task to present to a large global community of coffee drinkers, many of whom have likely thought about this issue and possible solutions.
The contest will take place on the betacup’s partner platform jovoto.com, a leading mass collaboration community for innovators and creatives. Anyone can submit an idea on how to reduce paper cup consumption and promote adoption of environmentally-friendly alternatives. Ideas will be open to the public for discussion, and community members and jurors will be able to provide feedback, allowing collaborators to refine and update their submissions through June 15, when the contest comes to a close.
Starbucks has provided $20,000 in cash prizes to be awarded for the most innovative ideas. The participant who submits the best idea, determined by an expert panel, will receive a $10,000 cash prize. In addition, participants whose ideas are among the top five selected by the community of collaborators will each be awarded a $2,000 cash prize.
“Given the complexity of the disposable cup waste issue, we need a broad range of stakeholders to become involved in finding solutions. In addition to working with local municipal governments, materials suppliers and cup manufacturers to improve recycling infrastructures, we believe in harnessing the creativity of environmentally conscious individuals to identify new alternatives,” said Jim Hanna, Starbucks director of Environmental Impact. “We’re looking forward to seeing how people respond to the challenge.
We have also secured Core77 as media partner. Core77 is a New York-based design network supporting the global design community through online services, resources, and inspiration. We are thrilled to bring this opportunity to the professional designers, design students, and design enthusiasts in our community, and believe that an extraordinary number of inspired and innovative solutions will emerge,” said Allan Chochinov, Editor in chief of Core77.com.
The project is further supported by Denuo, an innovations unit of Publicis Groupe. Denuo will provide communications strategy and community management expertise to the project. To sign up to the betacup and receive notification when submissions go live, go to: http://www.jovoto.com/signup/betacup
Posted in: contest | Tagged: | 64 Comments
