Pando Days Finale Event (July 25) – Judges’ & Finale Page
Overview
Thank you for agreeing to be a judge for Pando Days, uniting ten Southland colleges and universities to create initiatives that can build a more resilient Los Angeles County. Please find the Pando Days program page here, with links to all the relevant sub-pages.
The ten participating higher educational institutions are premiering their projects at a rate of two schools/projects per week, from June 16 through July 21. You are not expected to join any of the premiere roll-out events (though you are welcome, if you wish); premiere events will be recorded and posted along with project deliverables on school/project pages so that you may view content and make your assessments at your leisure prior to July 25.
When you are ready to begin your assessment, please:
1) Check the roll-out schedule to see which of the schools have past their premiere dates; this will let you know if content for a given school has fully posted. (For your convenience, we will also send you simple alerts of what’s going up.)
2) Select the school/project you are interested in from the schools & projects overview page, where you will find for your review:
a) a very brief project description;
b) a recording of the premiere presentation (it is important to listen to Team Lead presentations — they are only 5-6 min. each; the subsequent Q&A from sustainability officers and the public should be interesting but is optional); and
c) project deliverables, including a deck or written materials, as well as supporting content such as renderings, prototypes, implementation plans, video, etc.
Feel free to review projects on a rolling basis, as they become available, or wait until all have been posted — it’s entirely up to you.
Assessment criteria
All teams are addressing one of the LA County sustainability goals with a new initiative or campaign as described in the presentation; supported by an implementation/strategy plan; and made real through some level of prototype development or proof-of-concept .
We want to inspire creativity and out-of-the-box thinking, but Pando Days is not simply about inspirational ideas. It’s about bringing those ideas down to Earth. Projects will represent different phases of development, given differences in project complexity, the amount of development work needed prior to launch, etc. But we expect all teams to build a compelling case for how their project can make a difference in the real world, and convince you that they can go about making it.
We are expecting you to assess projects according to personal criteria that you could quickly summarize at the Finale event, explaining what you personally look for when you attempt to identify promising initiatives. We hope that your comments will be of educational value to all participants who may be looking downstream for collaborative support of any kind.
Selecting winners
Please select four “winners” ranked in order of preference. And while it is not a requirement, we hope that projects you choose are ones that you would welcome having further conversations with downstream with the intent of possibly offering advice or assistance in some way to further their work. This possibility, however, is wholly and entirely at your discretion.
Selection deadline: July 23.
Note that this is a tight turn-around, given that the Caltech/Sustainability presentation is July 21. We will make sure that a recording of their presentation is posted that evening.
Zoom link for the Finale event (Saturday, July 25, 2:00 PACIFIC). Pass: 820026
Run-of-Show:
- Opening — Eugene (3 min.)
- Statement from John Cobb, chair of Pando (3 min.)
- Summary statements about the 10 initiatives — Eugene (3 min.)
- Comments from judges: We have you presenting in this order: Kathy, Mark, Andy, Peter. Eugene will introduce each of you. He will announce all winners at one time. Then you will each come on to talk about your choices. You might want to do so in reverse order: your 4th place, 3rd, 2nd, and 1st choices. Please talk briefly about how you made the decisions you did; and then engage in a 5-min. conversation with the Team Lead from the winning school (please keep an eye on your own clock to stay close to 5 min. for this). You might cover points such as: “I’m passionate about the subject area you address because…;” “I love this specific initiative and have chosen it because…;” “The question(s) I’m most interested in asking you is…” If you’re willing, it would be wonderful as well to conclude your comments with an offer of some kind of help to further a team’s initiative in some way: for example, “I’d like to have a follow-up conversation with you…;” “I’d like to introduce you to a person who I think might be a good partner to help you push ahead…;” etc. This is of course entirely at the judges’ discretion. But if you see a way to facilitate your favorite project moving ahead, it would make a strong conclusion to your conversation with the Team Lead to mention the opportunity.
- Statement from Gary Gero, CSO for the County; including announcement of County resolution regarding Pando Days (5 min.).
- Close and announcement of Pando Days-2 — Eugene (2 min.)
Publicity: If you wish to help publicize Pando Days and share the work that is being done across the Southland to create a more hopeful future, please feel free to make use of our Media Kit.
Contacts
Eugene Shirley: 310-428-6406
Shelley Goldstein: 310-625-6206
Betsy Hunter: 818-326-8354