How to Play

For instructions in languages other than English, please click here.

 

 

The first step to joining the Digital Open is to register and get started.

What can you do at the Digital Open?
You can keep your own blog of interesting links, thoughts, or constructive challenges to peers with My Notes, and comment on the Notes of others. You can also complete a quiz or create an essay to unlock secret achievements. You can meet people and communicate with other users via private message, and participate in our Q&A forum. Best of all, you can get started on a project, and create ways to document and share it with your peers.

Your projects should be more than just an idea. We want to see how you've made or begun to make your idea a reality. Show us your designs, share your code, record yourself doing a demo, post photographs of friends using creation... whatever! Just be sure that you both show AND tell!

To submit a project, simply follow the instructions on the Submit a Project page. Read our overview of free and open technology and click around the categories for inspiration. What will you make with free and open technology to change the world and make the future? Remember, our deadline is August 15, 2009.

The Rules

  • We’re looking for projects from young people age 17 and under. If you're over 18, you’re welcome to participate in the community, but we won't be able to accept your project.
  • We unfortunately can't host your video and photos on our site, so please use a 3rd party content host of your choosing and embed or link from your project page. Don't worry, we will make sure we look at everything.
  • Your project must be licensed under one of the free and open technology licenses (choose one from the drop down menu). Not sure which is best? Read all about them here.
  • Respect your community! Treat each other well!
  • Any multimedia content must either be created by you or shared under a free or open license (e.g., CC-Attribution-Share Alike) and be attributed to the content creator.
  • If a project is submitted by a group of collaborators, only one prize package will be awarded to the whole group.
  • While we prefer submissions in English, submissions will be accepted in Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish. Submissions in these languages must be received by August 1, 2009, and need to know as far in advance as possible that you plan to submit a non-English project. Just ping us at info@digitalopen.org.

That’s it. Seriously. Those are the only rules.

Projects will be reviewed by our panel of judges after the contest closes, and eight projects will be selected as Grand Prize winners. We're looking for originality, practicality, and, of course, use of free and open technology and principles. Blow us away!

In addition to submitting a winning project, there are other ways to earn recognition in the community. By doing different tasks, you will unlock achievements with badges you can embed on your blog or other website. Two of these achievements are quizzes, one a quick multiple choice quiz to test your knowledge of free and open technology tidbits, the other an essay about what “free and open technology” means to you. But unlike essays assigned by your teacher, we want this one to be fun. You can post your response as a written essay, a video response, a photo gallery, or any other new media format.

The rest of the achievements are yours to figure out by interacting with the site and other users on it to learn, invent, and create community. We encourage you to be creative with your Digital Open Notes blog and interact with other community members by commenting on their posts and projects. Try to team up with someone and submit a project together!

Most important things to remember: respect your community and each other—and have fun!

Photograph by Matt Powers