Today we have posted the list of proposals selected as semi-finalists by our Judging Panel.  To work through all 9,000 + proposals has been a huge logistical exercise, underway at full pace since our closing date of April 30, 2010.

All participants in the competition will receive an e-mail today from David Byrne our Chair of Judges to thank them sincerely for taking part in this amazing initiative.

The next stage of the process involves our semi-finalists benefiting from coaching by experienced, successful entrepreneurs who will work closely with each participant over the coming weeks to prepare them for a challenge by our Judging Panel at the end of August.  At that stage the Judging Panel will select 5 finalists.

The 5 finalists will come together for a further event over two days – September 16 and 17, 2010, at the end of which the two winners will be announced.

Thank you to everyone who has taken part in Your Country, Your Call.  The support received by way of over 9,000 proposals created its own great sense of optimism.

Our next update will be at the end of August when the finalists will be announced.

Your Country, Your Call Team

Thanks again for all of your proposals.  It was simply extraordinary during the last hours to the closing of the competition. 

The website will be quiet now as we concentrate on the evaluation & judging process.

We plan to select the 20 semi finalists by June 30, 2010.  After that, the key dates are to select our 5 finalists by August 31, 2010 and then finally the two winners on September 17, 2010.

Thank you once again for your amazing involvement.  We will update our News page periodically.

Your Country, Your Call Team

With just hours left in the competition we certainly have a challenge ahead!  Over the past two days alone we have received over 1,000 submissions which is absolutely brilliant – thanks so much for taking the trouble to take part. We are heading for over 8,000 proposals in all, which is extraordinary!

Competition Closes

The competition will close at 23:59 GMT April 30, 2010.  In order to concentrate entirely on evaluating the thousands of submissions received we will not be receiving comments, votes, or blogs to the website once the competition closes.  

It will, however, still be possible to view proposals on the competition page.

Info Mailbox

Our info@yourcountryyourcall mailbox will be open until 11:00am, Irish time on Saturday, May 1, 2010 and will reopen on Tuesday, May 4, 2010 at 10.00am Irish time.

Next steps

This has been a most amazing initiative and we have been overwhelmed by the fantastic interaction with the website and the participation in the competition.

Things will go a little quiet on the website for a period as we put all our resources and energy behind the evaluation process so that we will be able to deliver on our goal of selecting our 20 semi finalists by June 30, 2010.

Thank you for all of your support since February 17, 2010, the day that the competition was launched.  We look forward to your continued support as we work towards our final announcement of winners on September 17, 2010.

Your Country, Your Call Team

With just over three weeks to closing date the proposals are still being received at a great rate.  Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to participate.

The website has been refreshed a little in response to requests for further clarification on the judging criteria and also on how to submit a proposal.  The website now highlights more prominently the criteria that the Judges will apply to each proposal and also how proposals should ideally be presented. We have also placed two tutorials on the homepage How to REGISTER and How to SUBMIT.  

Importantly the Judges will be looking for:

The degree of fresh thinking and creativity that has been applied in building the proposal 

The scale of what is being proposed – does it have the possibility of generating significant employment opportunities?

A convincing case for implementation – do we have the resources (financial, human, technical, infrastructural….) – or could we get them? what barriers need to be overcome? how long is implementation likely to take?

Our Judges are in place and are listed in our NEWS page.  Over the coming weeks they will be preparing themselves and their calendars to consider the proposals in May & June, with the objective of selecting up to 20 semi finalists by June 30, 2010.  Over a 6 week period in July/August a Coach will work with each of the semi finalists to help polish up their proposals, before being interviewed by the end of August 2010.

Five finalists will be chosen and they will go forward for the final selection of the two winning proposals on September 16 and 17, 2010.  After that, it’s about implementation. That’s Phase 2 of Your Country, Your Call.

For clarification, all proposals are noted as “Under Consideration” until such time as they have been evaluated.

Based on the pattern of submissions to date we will likely end up with more than 7,000 proposals to consider.  So a major task is on hand from May 1, 2010 through to June 30, 2010 to meet our objectives.  At present we have more than 92,000 visits to our website from over 170 countries and territories.

Thanks very much for taking part and thanks for all your helpful observations and suggestions.

The clock is ticking and will stop at 23:59 on April, 30 2010.  It’s time to get that brilliant proposal from the thinking to the SUBMIT page!

COMMENTS FACILITY UPDATE

As mentioned in yesterday’s update we had to disable the comments facility on proposals to make some technical modifications. We anticipated that this facility would be restored within 24 hours and can now confirm that the facility is operational. 

The comments facility to our BLOG is still being addressed.

Thanks for your patience.

Comment facility

Last evening the comment facility was disabled to address a technical issue and to help website administration.  Regretfully, some users will have received comments that had nothing at all to do with their proposal and apologies for that.  It is intended to have the comment facility operational again within the next 24 hours.

If users do not want to receive email updates of comments received on their proposal then they should amend that option in their PROFILE (top right hand of page “Edit Your Profile”, scroll down to bottom left “email settings” and choose the option). This is a simple process that should only take seconds.

Tograí

Tá roinnt aighneachtaí tagtha chugainn ag iarraidh orainn glacadh le hiarratais i nGaeilge.  Níor dhiúltaíomar riamh d'iarratas toisc go raibh sé scríofa i nGaeilge agus tá áthas orainn, go deimhin, a dhearbhú go gcuirfimid fáilte roimh aon iarratas dá leithéid inár dteanga dhúchais.

Contributors and Judging panels

To put this competition together, there are a huge number of contributors to Your Country, Your Call who have voluntarily given valuable time and effort and financial contributions to get the job done. No one organisation, or individual, or group of people or organisations, own the initiative.  This is an initiative for Ireland.

Next week we will be announcing our Judging panels together with the complete picture of those involved so far in this important initiative.  This information will be posted to our NEWS section.

So the competition has 37 days to run and there is great positivity generated by all of the genuine submissions that have been made so far.

Thanks so much for taking the time to support this initiative

and also for helping us to manage a programme that is, occasionally, not without its challenges!

Monday, March 22, 2010

Another milestone

Passed the 10,000 mark in terms of registered users and visits now from 160 countries – so lots of thinking going on!  The website will be refreshed over the next weeks as we as we move further into the competition.  The refresh will draw further attention to the evaluation criteria and the sorts of essential information that is needed to evaluate proposals.  This has also been mentioned in the last blog.

Evaluation and judging

The judging of proposals is the most important part of the decision making process.  Whether a proposal has one vote,  or none, or thousands, every proposal will be rated against the judging criteria – some won’t meet them at all, some will meet them to some extent, and some will meet or exceed them.  Those judgements won’t be made by voting.

Inappropriate proposals

A core objective of YCYC is to create a platform that will enable the presentation and development of ideas that can be put into action to develop opportunities for investment, employment and consequently prosperity in Ireland.

Unfortunately not all the proposals submitted to date are similarly motivated. In particular, over the past few days the site has been the subject of a sustained spamming exercise with multiple comments from a small number of sources around a small number of proposals. That activity has impacted negatively on genuine users of the site. The source of those postings have their own agendas and are not compatible with the objectives of Your Country, Your Call. On that basis they are no longer posted.

Competition still open!

Still 39 days to go before closing and then getting down to the judging business!

Thanks very much for your comments and interest – it is all much appreciated.

Thanks very much for all of your comments.  As far as duplication of ideas is concerned this is covered in our Terms & Conditions, however, unless copied verbatim it is reasonably unlikely that ideas will be the same - similar perhaps, but exactly the same is unlikely.  In any event, as we work through all of the submissions we will be applying the same rigour to each and also taking care where there are very similar proposals presented.

Voting comes up for more commentary and we are aware of the limitations – and the benefits - of having this feature.  With the numbers of submissions received it is certainly an issue keeping “most recent” static for any length of time.  Judging will be a critical part of the competition and the panel of judges will be announced within the next few weeks.

Our technical comments are being followed up and where possible changes are being made.

There continues to be a fantastic interaction with the site and have over 3,000 submissions.  When scanning the proposals, some would be light on delivering the objective to “create opportunities for employment or further the prosperity of the country.” If there is any doubt at all about putting the content of a proposal together, then the Tutorial – “How to submit a proposal” explains it all. The particular areas the tutorial highlights are:

Why you consider Ireland to be the ideal location for your proposal?

What you think Ireland has that could really make your proposal work?

How you think your proposal could create opportunities for employment and prosperity in Ireland?

Why you think that the timing is right for your proposal?

This competition has every possibility of delivering the two transformational proposals that need to be implemented.  There are more than 6,000 registrations and over 100 countries visiting the website.  So great thinking is happening all over the World! 

Ireland will own the success of this initiative.  This is all about us, about Ireland, and mostly about our long term economic growth and prosperity.  Not a bad set of thoughts for a St. Patrick's Day.

Thanks for taking the time to comment.

Thanks again for all your commentaries.  We are still experiencing amazing interest with nearly 4,000 registered users and getting close to 2,000 submissions. We expected an enthusiastic response but perhaps not to the degree that we are experiencing – which is brilliant!

Having said that, we referred in our last commentary to a relatively small number of inappropriate submissions that we received, and quickly managed.  Regretfully, while numbers are small, even one such contribution adds to the management challenge of such a busy site.  As a result of this unfortunate fact, and also from monitoring traffic flows, we are introducing the following changes to our site administration with effect from 6.00pm GMT today, March 2, 2010.

Site Management Update

All proposals will continue to be date and time stamped, and acknowledged immediately on submission.

For 17 hours per day on weekdays (Monday thru Friday) there may be a slight delay experienced before a proposal is visible on the site.  However, proposals submitted between 1.00am and 8.00am GMT will not be visible until after 8.00 am GMT daily.

On Saturdays & Sundays, proposals submitted at any time will be posted and visible on site, at intervals throughout the weekend.

Managing the site in this way will enable us to apply our Competition Terms & Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) efficiently and effectively.  The Competition Terms & AUP are posted on our website.

Support & Voting & Decision Making

We understand the shortcomings of the voting feature as highlighted in recent comments.  Comments highlight to some extent the reason why voting will be taken into account but will not be the overriding decision maker.  If we can improve on this feature over the course of the competition we will do so.

It is certainly difficult to read through, what is now nearly 2,000 submissions, even if they all appeared on one list. However, every entry will be considered on its own merit by the Judging panel.  Early entrants or later submissions will have no bearing on the degree of consideration given. Evaluation will not commence prior to the closing date of April 30, 2010.

So we are making great progress with less than 60 days to go.  Plenty of thinking going on - all around the world - with nearly 8,000 Facebook followers and visits now from almost  90 countries!

Great thinking!

Following yesterday’s contribution we wanted to continue where we left off to some extent – and thanks for the further comments received last evening and today. 

For ease of conversation we have headlined some topics :

Proposals that don’t find themselves as winners

Implementation of the proposals that don’t find themselves in the winner’s enclosure is a real consideration.  We are firmly placing this on our agenda as essential to think through and address as we move beyond the closing date in April.

Supporters influence

The number of supporters for a particular proposal will be taken into account by the Judging Panel but will not be the overriding consideration.  That responsibility will rest with the Judges.

Collaboration & editing

Proposals can be collaborated upon through the “comment” facility.  Unfortunately the product does not have an “edit” facility so we have to ask that if editing of a submission is required that a “new” proposal is submitted.  It is always the latest version of a proposal that will be considered.

Tech feedback, additional functionality & queries

Thanks so much for your feedback on the technical side of the web.  We will address as many of the issues as is feasible.  We recognise that the site is not perfect.  Having said that, already it has proven, even with its imperfections, that people everywhere can get engaged with the competition and the movement overall.  Additional functionality such as short listing the proposals into tighter lists is likely to be a big ‘ask’ as the product does not have that feature currently. 

Could we suggest that if there are questions about attaching documents, or any functional queries, that they might be directed to our info@yourcountryyourcall email. 

After a slow introduction to this conversation we will work hard at keeping it up to date. 

As at today we have moved registrations beyond 2,800 and our proposals total almost 1200.  We have visits from over 70 countries and our Facebook following is 7,300.

Not a bad start for a movement to get us thinking positively!