Announcing our FINAL set of Top4 Finalists & Honourable Mentions for 2013!

Don’t you hate it when you run the numbers through three times and get three different results?

Regardless, the people have spoken and here are our final Top4 Finalists and Honourable Mentions of 2013, in alphabetical order according to YOU the voters:

Top4 Finalists

1. Girls Gone Wilde by Urban Curvs:  “Girls Gone Wilde Late Night Cabaret is a tongue in cheek evening of performances created by female artists or with a strong female perspective.”
2. Kmitt by Sunrise Community Link Resource Centre:  “To raise awareness about poverty in Calgary through the sale of locally knitted mittens by folks who have experienced poverty firsthand themselves.”
3. The Potluck Pageant by Mark Jeffery:  “An event to disarm then overwhelm around eating healthy while creating community. Local business prepares and shares healthy food - you will eat well and leave inspired!”
4. YYCShows by Cheryl Johnson:  “Comprehensive Calgary concert listings at www.yycshows.com. Links to bands & ticket sales, a show calendar, and information on music venues, blogs and promoters.”

 

Honourable Mentions

• Dinosaur Dance Party by Brendan McGuigan:  “A youth-friendly, all-ages outdoor dance party featuring young electronica artists…and dinosaurs.”

Once again, a BIG THANK YOU to everyone above for volunteering to participate in our first-ever Audience Participation selection process. It’s not something we’ll do every month, but variety is the spice of life, as they say. Did you enjoy it? Should we do more things like it? And if so, what or how? Let us know in the comments or hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. We might just incorporate some of them when we re-launch sometime in 2014.

Our final Pitch Night of 2013 will be on Wednesday, December 18 at 6:30 p.m. at the Endeavor Arts & Events Space.

 

• What:  The FINAL Awesome Calgary Pitch Night of 2013, featuring Top4 Finalists selected by YOU!
• Where:  Endeavor Arts & Events Space (1209 - 1 Street SW)
• When:  Wednesday, December 18, 2013 at 6:30 p.m.
• RSVP:  Facebook

So please join us in supporting our four great ideas this month (especially if you voted for one of them!) before we break until the new year.

Announcing our Top4 Finalists and Honourable Mentions for August 2013

Summer's winding down (already?!) but things are heating up here over at Awesome Calgary, as we prepare to award yet another $1,000 micro-grant to someone to help make their Awesome Idea become a reality.

So, without further ado, here are our Top4 Finalists and Honourable Mentions for August 2013, in no particular order:

Top4 Finalists

1. Crowdsourced Sculpture by Tom Bielecki:  "Engineering+Art: World's first crowdsourced 3D printed sculpture."
2. Buck E. Deeds by Cory Chapdelaine:  "Random good deeds all over Calgary for the entire month of September."
3. Waterways - A Commemorative Flood Sculpture by Alia Shahab:  "A kinetic water sculpture constructed using salvaged flood materials, through a community collaboration, to explore the power and mystery of water and highlight the resilience and spirit of Calgary's community."
4. Bridgeland Community Kids Basketball Camp by Paul Lau:  "Free fun Basketball Camp for Kids."

Honourable Mentions

• Crazy EL-Wire Guerrilla Art by Kyle Cappis:  "Public lit-up EL-Wire art installations."
• Pterodactyl HD by Jason Bedard:  "The idea is to make a model pterodactyl with embedded HD video camera fly continuously back and forth overhead of a busy public event, wirelessly broadcasting all that it sees with its fearsome dino-birdie eyes."
• Meaningful Meals by Anneke Scholten:  "Bringing people back together around the dining table!"
• Funding the Vanguard by Daniel Rodriguez:  "Bringing forward the newspaper that Calgary deserves."
• Vital Signs Machines!!! by Shauna Brady:  "We (the nurses) want to buy fancy vital signs machines to better serve our patients on U43!"

This month, our Awesome Calgary Pitch Night will take place on a special day of Tuesday, August 27 at 6 p.m. at our usual haunt, the Endeavor Arts and Design Space. That's this TUESDAY!

• What:  Awesome Calgary's July Pitch Night and Awesome Hours
• Where:  Endeavor Arts & Event Space (1209 - 1 Street SW)
• When:  Tuesday, July 23, 2013 at 6 p.m.
• RSVP:  Facebook

 Hope you can make it out!

May's Top4 Finalists, Honourable Mentions and Venue

As we say goodbye to year two and start on the road to year three here at AF-Calgary, this month we'll be awarding our 25th $1,000 micro-grant on a special date: Wednesday, May 22.

With that in mind, here are this month's Top4 Finalists and Honourable Mentions, in no particular order:

Top4 Finalists

1. BuckTeeth: Oral Hygiene with a Social Conscience by Kyle MacQuarrie:  "Receive a new toothbrush to your door every three months while making a philanthropic donation of four toothbrushes to a chosen charitable organization."
2. Pavo Concertus by Ravi Mani:  "Junk Yard Wars + Pickup Truck + Peacocks + Pianos = Peacock art truck with an array of lights and sound."
3. Largest Potluck Challenge by Anneke Scholten:  "To promote the importance of Eating Together, we will attempt to break the Guinness World Record for Largest Potluck!"
4. 2013 People's Poetry Festival by Shannon McClennan:  "A free, three-day celebration of poetry in Calgary for young and old, amateur and beyond!"

Honourable Mentions

• Song of Life by Daniel Okpala:  "Music for a Cause."

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Again, please note that this month's Awesome Calgary Pitch Night takes place on a special date:  Wednesday, May 22 at the Endeavor Arts and Events Space.

• What:  Awesome Calgary May 2013 Pitch Night
• Where:  Endeavor Arts & Events Space (#200, 1290 - 1 Street SW)
• When:  Wednesday, May 22, 2013. Doors open at 6 p.m.

Finally, we're accepting submissions for our June grant, and the deadline for that is Monday, June 10. Apply here.

In June, we'll be returning to our regular fourth-Thursday-of-the-month schedule and it'll be a special month for us as the Canadian chapters of The Awesome Foundation have declared Thursday, June 27 as Awesome Day in Canada! It'll be a fun one for sure. Stay tuned for more details.

Hope to see you out on Wednesday!

The Top4 Finalists and Honourable Mentions for our Second Anniversary!

Only a few days away now until we celebrate our Second Anniversary, so without further ado, here are our Top4 Finalists and Honourable Mentions for April 2013, in no particular order:

Top4 Finalists

1. Pavo Concertus by Isabel Chan:  "Transform a pickup truck into a peacock pipe organ with pitch-synchronized LEDs."
2. Dartwars by Ryan McEathron:  "A one-month long non-stop Nerf fight."
3. Give A Mile by Kevin Crowe:  "Give a Mile is a Not-For-Profit looking to enable people to visit terminally ill friends and family through micro-donations of travel points."
4. 24 Hour Clarkson by Seth Leon:  "One Band (Jeremy Clarkson, Ben and Seth Leon), 24 consecutive performances in 24 different locations in 24 hours."

Honourable Mentions

• Sprout by Stu Mason:  "We educate and enable Calgarians to make greener everyday purchases!  We're striving to make Calgary a future sustainability leader!"
• Sharing Stories by River Wearmouth:  "Sharing personal stories and creating a connected community."
• Fair Trade Calgary by Janalee Morris-Wales:  "Fair Trade Calgary will host a fair trade film screening and fair trade market to promote World Fair Trade Day."
• Roller Ball or Pedal Ball by Kevan Leycraft:  "A seven-foot globe a person a person gets inside, sits down and pedals!"
• Yarn Wristband Machine by Jason Bedard:  "I want to build a machine that makes event entry wristbands from yarn and then automatically ties this fibre creation to a person's wrist."
• THE REGENERATOR by Michael Kho:  "A generator that requires no gas!"

Please join us as we celebrate two whole years of awesomeness in our city.  We'll have a few of our past winners helping us with the festivities, live entertainment, and of course, what kind of a birthday party would this be if we didn't have a little cake?

• What:  Awesome Calgary's Second Anniversary $1,000 Thursday Bash!
• Where:  Endeavor Arts & Event Space (1290 - 1 Street SW)
• When:  Thursday, April 25, 2013.  Doors open at 6 p.m.  Program starts at 6:30 p.m.
• RSVP:  Facebook and Yelp

A reminder that we're now accepting submissions for the month of May.  If you'd like to submit an idea to Awesome Calgary for consideration, fill out this handy-dandy web form!  The May submission deadline is Friday, May 10, 2013 at 11:59 p.m.

And finally, there's still time to be a Guest Trustee for our Second Anniversary!  A Guest Trustee gets all of the voting rights that our normal full-time Trustees get, but only for one month and we still have a couple of slots available for this occasion.  If you're interested in participating in this very special role at this month's event, let us know! (PS: We're also on the look out for full-time Trustees too, plus a bunch of volunteers to help us dominate year three!)