Every country will handle their own National judging and will select their own national representative team.

Logistics and Overview
The hosting of the Global Enterprise Challenge in the Southern Hemisphere for the first time brings new challenges and new opportunities. One of the challenges relates to the distance from Northern Hemisphere locations but even more importantly the time difference between Australia/New Zealand through Europe and the Americas has to be managed. The 2008 Global Enterprise Challenge, while hosted in Australia, will be run to a British Summer Time (BST) timetable. This will have it commence at 11:00am BST on Sunday June 22 and end at 11:00am BST on Monday June 23.

For the purposes of planning, we can consider that the teams are in one of up to 3 broad time regions, EME (Europe Middle East), Asia Pacific and the Americas. Because of the extreme time difference experienced by the Americas, they will be permitted an earlier start, using a 24 hour period to end no later than the close of the Challenge scheduled for 11:00 am BST on Monday June 23. Both Asia Pacific and EME teams will run the Challenge between 11:00am Sunday June 22 and 11:00am Monday June 23 in their respective time zones. This will enable the closing time for all entries to meet the deadline for the official end of the challenge in EME.

The judging timetable provides for a 4 hour window after the official close of the event. The results of the Challenge will be programmed for the 28th hour which will have them available by 3:00 pm BST on Monday June 23.

All teams should have their submissions loaded to the central judging site promptly, to be available for access no later than 11.45am BST Monday June 23). Judging will commence as soon as possible as team submissions become available online.
The judging window will be controlled by its closing time of 2:30 pm BST. This will leave half an hour to collate the scores of the judges and determine the final result by 3:00 pm BST.

Judging Timetable (11:00 am Sunday June 22 – 3:00 pm Monday June 23)

Rules relating to timing and submission

Timing
It is important that notwithstanding the time zone differences, teams should be given equal opportunity while affording all the flexibility to work to a schedule convenient and appropriate in their region. This means complying with the timing in the 0-28 hour timeline even if this causes teams in Asia Pacific and the Americas to close off and load submissions hours before the official close. This will be at the same point in the process as that of the teams in EME working to the official British Summer Time timetable.

Submission of entries
Each team representing its country must load a two-page written report using a font size no smaller than 10-pt and a web-streamed 3 minute presentation. The deadline for loading is the 25th hour with no further work permitted after the 22nd hour for the written report and the 23rd hour for the presentation.

Who are the judges?
Each participating country will be encouraged to nominate up to two pre-eminent judges. Suitable candidates need to be persons in the fields of Science, Business, Research, Academia, The Environment, Medicine or similar pursuits. They will need to be able to commit to judge 8 team entries and be available in the hours specified for judging with access to the internet.

Where a country is running simultaneous eliminations to determine the one best country entrant, they will need to provide their own judges for this purpose. Their nominated international judge/s should not be a judge of the local competition and should be reserved for just their international judging duties. They are encouraged to use the same judging process though which will be made available for the purpose.

As a general rule, each international judge will be asked to evaluate as many teams as possible but at least half the teams plus 1. The teams will be randomly allocated to each judge on this basis for scoring and they must at least enter scores on these.

Following precedent, NASA judges will be invited to supplement country nominations. The host country will nominate as many judges as needed to backfill country nominations and to ensure a sufficient minimum number of judges is available to improve the likelihood of objective judging.

What is being judged?
The teams will be submitting the following items in their proposal:

• 3 minute video file of the presentation
• 2 page document file of team business plan (minimum 10 pt font)
• PowerPoint file (maximum 4 slides)
  

Scoring Rules
The factors being judged are:

• Creativity – assessing the level of unique and inventive content and the degree of fit to purpose and friendliness to the environment
• Finance and Production - assessing the degree of feasibility and comprehensive coverage of all the issues relating to funding and manufacture and making the solution sustainable
• Marketing – assessing the plans for market research and marketing to determine if the proposed solution has a market and can be moved to its market through promotion and direct selling or other appropriate method
• Communication – assessing how well the team conveyed its message within the allowable constraints and through the media employed

The judges will score each factor out of 10 and enter these in the area provided for them at the judging website. Judges are requested to also enter as many comments as they can to help the teams learn from the experience. It is anticipated we will be able to publish a report for each team showing them the summary of their scores and the attached comments. These reports will not reveal scores given by any individual judge.

The judging software application will scale the marks out of 10 up to 25 so that with the 4 factor scores, we will be able to quote a percentage. In the averaging process, these are anticipated to be to two significant decimal places.

There is no need, nor is it encouraged, for judges to confer about particular scores for teams. The statistical method employed will take trends into account and is anticipated to be able to detect that scores given a particular team are not consistent. In this case, tie-breaking rules may be applied at the discretion of the coordinating judge. All of this special processing will be under the control of the computer and it is anticipated that human intervention will not be required.

The method
Judges will need to be able to efficiently score the teams because time will be limited and so the process has been kept as simple as possible. There will be a convenient link to view the presentations and the written reports online.

Judges may use any reasonable method to determine the single score for each factor. The process we are using requires only a single combined score out of 10 for each of the 4 factors for each team. We DO NOT need separate scores for the Written Report and the Video Presentation. It is strongly recommended that in the scoring of each team, judges look at the team’s Written Report first and allocate a score out of 10 for each of the 4 factors. They should record this score on a form provided for each team (see sample below). Then they should look at the team’s Video Presentation. An adjustment can then be made depending on the impression made in the Presentation and based on whether more or less value is implied in meeting the criteria set. The final score granted for the 4 factors should be clearly noted in the column provided. We would appreciate each judge adding up the final 4 factor scores to determine a check total. At the scoring data entry stage, the system will show a check total so judges can be confident they have made no errors if the totals match.

It is anticipated that the “Finance and Production” and “Marketing” scores will be well covered in the Written Reports and “Creativity” and “Communication” best indicated from the Video presentation.

Once a form has been completed for each team, it will be a simple matter to enter the scores directly into the system. Judges will be asked to click on a “Judging Completed” icon when they have finished all their allocated scoring. Up until that point, they will be permitted to adjust any score they have given to any of the teams. After clicking the icon, judges will be locked out and must contact the judging coordinator if any error has been made.

The judging software application will determine the placings automatically once the last judges’ scores are in.

Local and International Judging
The judging software to be used for the international judging is also highly recommended to streamline local judging as well, where elimination contests are held coinciding with the international event.

Should a country wish to use the software for their in-country elimination challenge, it can be set up in advance with the help of the host country coordinating judge.

Please advise the Australian Organising Committee if you wish to take advantage of the tool’s availability. Support will be provided both for set up and conduct of the judging process to ensure a smooth implementation and to allow a strong adherence to the international schedule.

Feedback Reports
It is expected all teams evaluated using the judging system will be provided with a full feedback report. This means that all international teams will receive personalised feedback and also each team where used in local in-country elimination challenges.

The exact format of the feedback reports has not been finalized at this time but it is anticipated that it will contain a full review of comments from the judges and an analysis of results factor by factor indicating a separate score and a ranking opinion.

Teams can expect to receive feedback from their efforts within 48 hours of the close of the Challenge. Each team must provide the event organising committee with a suitable e-mail address for the purpose of having the report forwarded.

Submissions to International Judging Panel:
Presentations must be no more that 3 minutes including a maximum of 4 PowerPoint slides. All Entries – must be pre recorded and emailed at the prescribed time. Presentations must be in English

Specific instructions will be sent out closer to the date of the event to tell you which file format entries must be in and which email address they should be sent to. However the following must be sent to enable remote entry to the Global final:

• 3 minute video file of the presentation
• 2 page document file of team business plan (minimum 10 pt font)
• PowerPoint file (maximum 4 slides)