Institute For The Future

Institute for the Future, in partnership with Sun Microsystems and Boing Boing, invite youth worldwide, age 17 and under, to join us as we explore the frontiers of free and open innovation. Running from April 15 until August 15, 2009, the Digital Open: An Innovation Expo for Global Youth will accept text, photos, and videos documenting projects at DigitalOpen.org from young people around the world, all licensed under one from a list of free and open software licenses.

Youth can submit projects in a variety of areas, ranging from the environment, media, and community, to the more traditional open source domains of software and hardware. Additionally, the Digital Open will provide resources and links to help them learn more about free and open technology movements, from figures like Richard Stallman to organizations like Creative Commons.

“As a company that engages schools, teachers and students from around the world to discover the transformative power of open technology, we jumped at the opportunity to work with the Institute for the Future to conceive and create The Digital Open,” said Linda Rogers, Sun Microsystems’ Director of Global Communities. “From Buenos Aries to Beijing to Budapest, we know that global youth are capable of spurring remarkable creativity and innovation. The Digital Open will be a window for the world to be impressed and optimistic about what the next generation will bring.”

Marina Gorbis, Executive Director of the Institute for the Future emphasized the participatory nature of the project. “The Digital Open is more than just a competition,” she says. “It’s about recognizing and encouraging kids to follow their passions while giving them community experiences that further encourage or challenge their best thinking.”

As an online, open source interpretation of the traditional high school science fair or world expo, the project’s social networking-driven website encourages collaboration, communication, and sharing ideas. On DigitalOpen.org, youth can converse with each other about their projects, submit entries together, and win a series of achievement badges that they can repost on their own blogs and websites.

The top project in each of our eight categories will be selected by our panel of approximately 20 judges, includes David-Michel Davies, Executive Director of the Webby Awards; Lawrence Lessig, Harvard/Creative Commons; David Pescovitz, Boing Boing; and Dale Dougherty, publisher of Make.

To give the talented young innovators public exposure beyond the Digital Open, Boing Boing, a culture and technology blog with millions of readers, will feature each winner in his or her own video for the site. “All of us at Boing Boing Video are excited about the opportunity to cultivate youth innovation in open technology,” says Xeni Jardin, Boing Boing Video Host and Executive Producer. “We hope that young makers will use the Digital Open to really show off their work—and to connect with like-minded digital explorers around the world."

The winning young innovators will also receive a technology prize package including a PeeCee mini laptop running the OpenSolaris operating system, a video camera, a solar-powered flashlight, and other assorted goodies.

Forty years ago, IFTF’s founders imagined a world in which it would be possible to improve human lives and build better organizations by thinking systematically about the future. These were visionaries saw the power of using computers and networks to build collective intelligence. Harnessing the intelligence of large groups of experts to develop forecasts, using new open-source tools take forecasting to the next level—engaging vastly larger groups of experts and non-experts in immersive experiences that allow us to envision multitudes of future possibilities in a dynamic and continuous way. DigitalOpen.org is the third open, collaborative platform that IFTF has launched this year where the public can participate in imagining and inventing the future, and the first specifically targeting youth—the true future of innovation.

Find out more at digitalopen.org.

Digital Open Judges:

• Lawrence Lessig, Creative Commons, Stanford Law School
• David-Michel Davies, Webby Awards, International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences
• Dale Dougherty, O’Reilly Media, MAKE
• Graham Hill, TreeHugger
• Billy Bicket, TechSoup/NetSquared
• Simon Dingle, Finweek Magazine
• Patricia Lange, USC Institute for Multimedia Literacy
• Eric Wilhelm, Instructables
• Xeni Jardin, Boing Boing
• David Pescovitz, Boing Boing/IFTF
• Kati London, Botanicalls & Area/Code
• The Playtime Anti-Boredom Society
• Nick Bilton, New York Times/NYC Resistor
• Jane McGonigal, IFTF
• Jessica Mah, IntershipIN.com
• Heather Ford, Africa Commons
• Isaac Mao, CNBlog.org, United Capital Investment, Global Voices Online
• Colin Bulthaup, Potenco
• Oona Castro, Overmundo Institute
• Elizabeth Stark, Yale Information Society Project, Students for Free Culture
• Ahrash Bissel, Creative Commons, ccLearn
• Phoebe Ayers, Author: How Wikipedia Works
• Kiruba Shankar, Knowledge Foundation
• Linda Rogers, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

About IFTF

The Institute for the Future (IFTF) is an independent, nonprofit research group with over 40 years of forecasting experience. The core of our work is identifying emerging trends and discontinuities that will transform global society and the global marketplace. We provide insights into business strategy, design process, innovation, and social dilemmas. Our research generates the foresight needed to create insights that lead to action. Our research spans a broad territory of deeply transformative trends, from health and health care to technology, the workplace, and human identity. The Institute for the Future is located in Palo Alto, CA.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Sun Microsystems develops the technologies that power the global marketplace. Guided by a singular vision – "The Network is the Computer" – Sun drives network participation through shared innovation, community development and open source leadership. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at sun.com

About Boing Boing

Boing Boing is a technology and Internet culture blog that attracts more than 3 million unique visitors to its site each month and has over 600,000 RSS subscribers. The Boing Boing brand was launched 20 years ago as a print 'zine and, according to the New Yorker magazine, is now "read by geeks the world over." By Comscore's measure, Boing Boing is among the five most-visited blogs on the Web. Time magazine named Boing Boing as one of the "Top 25 Blogs" of 2009 while Forbes voted Boing Boing "best of the web" among tech blogs, as did BusinessWeek. Boing Boing has won two Webby Awards and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Bloggies. Boing Boing is a division of Happy Mutants LLC, a media company with multiple online properties including Boing Boing Gadgets, Boing Boing Video, and Offworld, a new videogame culture site. Boing Boing Video was recently nominated for three 2009 Webby Awards, including best technology online video program and best host, and received Official Webby Honoree status for experimental online film and video.

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