The Summer of Math Exposition (SoME) competition is back again this year! If you have ever been interested in making math content online, now is your chance! Whether you want to make math videos, blogs, video games, interpretive dances or anything else, everything is allowed; however, there will be a few changes from last year:
Entries will be split into video and non-video categories. Last year, we noticed that the majority of entries were for video content, which lead to an unfortunate bias towards that style of content. Reviewers also found it difficult to judge between video and non-video entries. We understand that the non-video category will still have to deal with the same problem (after all, how can you truly compare a video game to an article to a blog post?), but these two higher-level distinctions should help at least a little bit.
There will be a new category for collaborations. We would like to encourage more people to work together, so we are going to try to pair experts (professors, researchers, or other knowledgeable individuals) with those who are looking for something interesting to create. The topic board can be found on github, but feel free to also discuss things on the #collabs channel on discord.
Like last year, there will be a cash prize of roughly $1000 for the “top” entries, but please be aware that such decisions are heavily subjective. The point of this competition is not necessarily to “win,” but to provide a kick to people to make more online content!
The competition timeline will remain largely the same with 10 weeks to submit, 2 weeks for peer review, and then 2 weeks for manual review with our panel of judges. Here are more specific dates:
June 6th: submissions open
August 15th: submission deadline / start peer review
Sept 1st: end peer review / start manual review
Sept 15th: finish manual review
Sept 23rd: announcement video
This is subject to change, but should be roughly accurate. Any changes will be noted here.
Judging
The judging criteria will remain largely the same as last year. In particular:
It has to be something new you make this summer. The spirit of this is to encourage people who've never put stuff online before. If you want to work on something you sort of started once before, that's probably fine, but it can't be something you already published before this contest. Optimally, you'd use this as a chance to try something new you otherwise might not have.
It has to be about math. Here we mean "math" very broadly, and more applied topics like physics or computer science are abundantly welcome. It just has to be the case that a viewer/reader might come away knowing something mathematical they didn't before.
One entry per person/group. We hope you make more, but we only have the capacity to judge participants based on a single entry.
It has to be available in English. If you want to put out an explainer in another language, wonderful! Please do! But the judges here will be English speakers, so to be considered for the contest the lesson has to be accessible to them. Also note that translated subtitles on an otherwise non-English video are allowed, but do not necessarily fit this criteria. If possible, please provide English audio to video content.
It has to be publicly visible and available for people to consume for free.
Finally, a quick note on the peer review. Last year, we received over 1000 entries, which was a lot more than expected. We did our best to judge everyone fairly and efficiently and think the peer review was an essential part of the process. Importantly, the peer review linked all the SoME videos on youtube together, which created a higher viewership for those involved. We will be ironing out several bugs, but the peer review will otherwise be unchanged from last year.
I am ready to submit!
Great! Click here!
I wanted to do it last time ... whole year already ?! no way ... aghghhh. OK, ;ets do it this time : ) see you there <3
Good luck to everyone participating!