ACM XRDS Essay Contest 2019

THE FUTURE OF EVERYDAY LIFE

Given three choices to focus your story “Masters or Slaves of Technology?”, “On the Brink of Orwell's '1984' Vision?” and “Digital Society - Including or Excluding?”, we invite you to submit your 1000-word essay talking about your thoughts on the topic. Win a video chat with a leading researcher in the field of your chosen topic for your essay.

Please send your submission to writingcontest@xrds.acm.org by October 20, 2019 11:59pm ET. 

Format and Eligibility

The ACM XRDS Essay Contest is open to all students of higher education. Essays should be submitted as pdf documents of any style with 900 to 1100 words via email to writingcontest@xrds.acm.org.

The deadline for submissions is October 20, 2019 11:59pm ET.

The authors certify with their submissions that they have followed the ACM publication policies on “Author Representations,” “Plagiarism” and “Criteria for Authorship” (http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/). Authors also certify with their submissions that they will transfer the copyright of winning essays to ACM.

Further the following rules apply:

1. The topic of your submission should be “THE FUTURE OF EVERYDAY LIFE” with focus on a selected subtopic: “Masters or Slaves of Technology?”, “On the Brink of Orwell's '1984' Vision?” or “Digital Society - Including or Excluding?”.
2. Submissions should reflect the author's unaided work. Inspiration from other sources should be clearly marked, and proper attribution to the rightful author should be given - failure to do so will result in disqualification!
3. Essays should be between 900 and 1100 words long. This includes the section titles, but not the references.
4. Articles should be written in good quality English, and checked for grammar or spelling mistakes.
5. The competition is open to anyone currently enrolled in higher education. This includes Bachelor, Master, and PhD level students. 
6. Your submission will be evaluated based on the following criteria:
   1. Topic Relevance
   2. Accuracy
   3. Creativity / Originality
   4. Structure
   5. Depth of Insight 
7. Your submission document has to include your full name, email address, affiliation and education level
8.  

Judges and Assessment Process

Entries will be judged by selected members of the XDRS editorial staff. All decisions by the judges are final. Judges are: 

Johanna Schacht, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Diane Golay, Uppsala University, Sweden

Darshit Patel, Pimpri Chinchwad College of Engineering, India

Judeth Choi, Carnegie Mellon University

Prizes 

All winning essays will be published on the ACM XRDS blog. A summary article about the competition and the winning articles will be published in the XRDS spring 2020 issue.

ACM XRDS grants each of the four winners with a 45-minute video chat session with a leading researcher in the field of their essay. The winners will be sent an email with information about the chat session some weeks after the end of the contest. Fewer than four winners may be selected if the quality of the submitted essays is not up to XRDS standards.

Questions?

In case of questions, please first check the ACM XRDS blog for announcements and clarifications: https://blog.xrds.acm.org/. You can also contact the ACM XRDS Essay Contest Organizers at writingcontest@xrds.acm.org.

Johanna Schacht – ACM XRDS Essay Contest Organizer and ACM XRDS Outreach Manager, with the involvement of Denise Doig, ACM Senior Editor, XRDS Managing Editor; Diane Golay, ACM XRDS Editor in Chief; Gierard Laput, ACM XRDS Editor in Chief; Cori Faklaris, ACM XRDS Social Media Editor and many more helping hands