YouTube Video Contest Created for Wesleyan Students

If you had one minute to speak with newly-elected President Barack Obama, what would you say?

Wesleyan undergraduate, graduate and Graduate Liberal Studies Program students are invited to video-record a response to this question with a chance to win a $100 cash prize.

As part of Wesleyan’s “Minute with the President-Elect” challenge, students can create and upload a video to Wesleyan’s YouTube site. Site viewers can log in, view the videos and rate their favorite entry.

The “Minute with the President-Elect” contest was created by the Office of University Communications and the New Media Lab to introduce Wesleyan’s YouTube video site to students, faculty, staff, parents and alumni. It is the first in a planned series of video challenges expressly for students at Wesleyan.

“By having a presence on YouTube, we’re creating an open environment for members of the Wesleyan community to express themselves and engage in the kind of spirited exchange online that they enjoy every day here on campus,” says Mark Bailey, director of strategic communications. “This contest launches that conversation in video on the web.”

Submissions must be two minutes or less in length and may contain live action, still images, animation or music. Videos must be in wmv, .avi, .mov or .mpg format and be no larger than 25 MB. Work cannot contain copyrighted content from other sources.

Videos will be accepted at the contest website until midnight on Nov. 30. The grand prize winner and nine runners-ups will be announced online on Dec. 3. Winners will be chosen based on the number of video “hits” and YouTube ratings.

“The ‘Minute with the President-Elect’ edition of the Wesleyan YouTube Contest shows Wesleyan’s activist chops as students participate in America’s most exciting presidential election in a generation and prepare for the change Barack Obama will bring to Washington,” Bailey explains. “The contest also raises awareness of the stimulating intellectual environment at Wesleyan.”

The contest and website were created by Mark Bailey; Ganesan “Ravi” Ravishanker, associate vice president for Information Technology Services; Melissa Datre, director of the New Media Lab; Ryan Lee, new media developer; Pat Leone, web administrator; and Adrian Cooke, associate director of web technology.

Ravishanker says Wesleyan is taking bold steps in using new technologies like YouTube and iTunesU to spread the Wesleyan message.

“First of all, I encourage everyone to go to www.youtube/wesleyan to see what is already there, subscribe to the channel and offer comments on how to make it interesting and better,” Ravishanker says. “Secondly, I strongly encourage the students to participate in this contest to help us show the world how creative and intelligent our students are.”

The Wesleyan community can follow the contest by watching submitted videos on line at http://www.youtube.com/wesleyan.