Announcing the Screencast 4 Cash Contest!

by Jason in MindBites News and Notes / 04.21.09

Are you a Photoshop Master, Programming Guru or Gaming God? Share your mad skillz in the Screencast 4 Cash Contest for a chance to win $1000! To enter, simply create an original technology screencast and upload it by May 18th at mindbites.com/cast4cash. You could win a Grand Prize of more than $1000, or take home the People’s Choice Award of more than $500. Screencast 4 Cash benefits the Youth for Technology Foundation and is brought to you by MindBites, TechSmith and Download Squad. Enter today!

How do I enter?
Create and upload an original screencast tutorial by May 18th at mindbites.com/cast4cash. The lesson should be instructional in nature, focused on technology (e.g. software, development, or gaming), at least three minutes long, and meet the standard MindBites lesson guidelines.

Prizes
Two prizes will be awarded: The Grand Prize winner will receive $1000 plus TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio + Snagit bundle. The People’s Choice Award winner will walk away with $500 and a copy of Snagit. Winners will be announced May 27th, 2009.

Timeline
* April 21st – Contest and weekly People’s Choice voting begins
* May 18th (11:59 PM CST) – Entry Deadline
* May 19th – Daily People’s Choice voting begins
* May 26th (11:59 PM CST) – Daily voting ends
* May 27th – Winners announced
Lots of dates, but the takeaway is this: the sooner you upload, the more votes you have a shot at collecting. After all, if your lesson isn’t there, no one is going to vote for it (and, you can’t start hitting up your facebook friends or twitter following until you get your entry uploaded).

Judging and Voting
All of our partners in the contest will be helping us out with the judging. From Download Squad, this will include Grant Robertson and Christina Warren. From TechSmith, we’ve snagged Betsy Weber, and from the Youth for Technology Foundation, we’ve signed on Njideka Harry. Joining this impressive group will be Jason Reneau, founder of MindBites, and Michael Pick, the professional screencaster extraordinaire from WordPress.TV. Entries will be judged on originality, material covered and value of instruction.

The People’s Choice Award will be based on popular vote by registered site visitors, who can vote for their favorite once per week until May 19th and daily thereafter until 11:59 PM on May 26th.

How do I vote?
To add your vote, just login or register as a user (don’t worry it’s free), click on the “All Entries - Vote!” tab above and add your vote to your favorite. The best part? Every time you vote, 10¢ goes to the Youth for Technology Foundation!

Stay in the know!
To keep yourself up to date on the contest, we’d suggest you follow @mindbites on Twitter. We’ll be tagging all of our contest tweets as #cast4cash, (and we’ll be encouraging the rest of you to do the same)!

Benefiting Youth for Technology Foundation
The Youth for Technology Foundation exposes children in underdeveloped parts of the world to technology through instruction and staffed technology centers. 10¢ per vote will be donated by the contest sponsors to YTF (up to $1000). Vote early and vote often – it’s for a good cause!

Partners While MindBites isn’t exactly new to video contests, this one has some notable firsts for us. Most importantly, we’re working with some fantastic partners. First, we’re joined by Download Squad, an AOL/WebLogs Inc blogging property. Both Grant Robertson and Christina Warren will be covering the contest and helping to pick our winners. Second, we’re also excited to be working with Techsmith, the company behind Jing Pro and Camtasia Studio. We’ve all used (and can attest to the greatness of) both of these screencasting applications, and even more importantly, we have really enjoyed getting to know the good people at TechSmith. If you’re looking for a cross-platform screencasting tool to get started with, Jing Pro is awesome and a steal at $15. Betsy Weber, TechSmith’s chief evangelist will be serving as a judge for our contest - if anyone knows good screencasting, it’s Betsy! Last, but certainly not least, we’re thrilled to be raising money and awareness for the Youth for Technology Foundation. YTF’s founder and executive director, Njideka Harry, will also be serving on our panel of judges.