Open Zone is here to stay

143 submissions, an almost-disaster and a remarkable recovery later, I think we can say our first Open Zone experiment “dead drops” was a success! Thaaaaank yoooou community… you surprise me every day. Aram (who stopped by the office on a surprise visit today) will sit down and make up his mind as the contest closes… and he’ll also announce the special little Winners Appreciation Award he has in mind.

What’s the jovoto Open Zone?

With the Open Zone, jovoto is establishing a new format for small scale crowdsourcing projects. With this move, we want to give artists, musicians, social causes and other grass-roots initiatives the chance to solve their communication or design problems with the power of jovoto. Unlike our regular creative contests, Open Zone projects require no prize money or handling fee. In turn, they have a much shorter submission period. This format is an invitation to all those awesome people out there pushing no-budget projects, simply because they believe in them.

The premise for projects to make it into the Open Zone: They must be particularly engaging, entirely non-profit and serve an overall social or cultural good.

We’ll have a slot for one Open Zone project up on the platform each month. Think you have the perfect project to pitch to the jovoto community? Well, apply to openzone@jovoto.com and explain to us what your project is about, why you need the community’s help, and how you intend to implement ideas and reward participants. In case we ever have more applications to an Open Zone slot at a time, we’ll let the jovoto Community decide!

What’s up next?

In fact, as I am writing this, our NYC team is already finalizing preparations for the next Open Zone. They’ll announce it in the next days, so I don’t want to spill the beans! I can say this much: It’s going to be a social cause, and a treat for those of you who love to illustrate and indulge in striking visual work.

And no: Open Zone does NOT mean jovoto isn’t gping to push for more high-Prize-Money contests and Labs projects with guaranteed payment. We know we must keep our crowdsourcing ecosystem in balance.