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Develop your contest concept
What do you hope to accomplish with the contest?
How does it meet your information security awareness programmatic goals?
What topics will your contest cover? (The more guidance you can provide, the better the contest entries!)
Who is supporting the contest? (It could be one campus department, a cross-campus effort with multiple departments, or a regional effort supported by multiple institutions.)
Who will be the primary point of contact?
Be able to answer core questions about your proposed contest
What is the schedule for the event?
When will it be announced?
What are the entries (videos? posters? something else?)
How will submissions be accepted?
What tool(s) will be used to accept videos and/or posters?
What contact information is needed from the participants and how is it capture/stored?
When are entries due? (and how are they submitted?)
Be sure to give contest entrants plenty of time to create their content.
Consider how you might leverage the school year calendar to encourage content creation.
When will winners be announced?
Will there be prizes?
What are the prizes?
Secure management support for the contest
Consider running contest rules and guidelines by campus legal counsel
Reach out to faculty in relevant areas (marketing, teaching, media arts) to secure participation and support
Consider sponsorship for prizes
Contest entrants like prizes, especially where “bragging rights” or recognition may not be sufficient to motivate entries
Can you secure sponsorship for cash prizes?
Establish reasonable amounts for the top 1-3 cash prizes.
Consider offering smaller prizes for 5-10 honorable mention winners (e.g., gift cards).
Consult with the campus financial office to confirm whether W-9 Forms will be required for award recipients. Also determine if additional guidance about reporting cash prizes to the IRS should be provided to all contest participants.
If you can’t offer cash prizes, what are the non-monetary prizes you can award?
Understand staffing resources needed. Staff resources will be needed for the following activities:
Planning (likely the information security awareness team, but could also include a program committee of interested others)
Marketing (needed to market the event to students)
Support during content creation/submission (will students need media help to finish their contest entries? If so, can you make any specialized expertise available? Will students need help submitting their contest entries via specialized software/tools/apps?)
Judges (who will judge the contest entries?)
Create rules and guidelines
Who can participate? Are there age limits?
How many items can one person or team submit?
How long are the entries?
What file formats must be used?
What topics must be covered in the entries? (Content requirements)
Required content: Branding for the institution’s IT/security program; licensing information
Will you create or share a sample entry to show what is an appropriate entry for the contest?
Any copyright/fair use items that you need to educate contestants about?
Make sure that the contest entries allow the campus information security program to use the contest entries after the event. Consider asking students to agree to an appropriate Creative Commons license (e.g., BY-NC-SA 4.0).
Who will preview submissions before judging begins?
How will judging take place?
Prizes
Create documentation
Contest entry form
Website announcing contest and containing additional information, FAQs
Sample advertising text
Sample contest entry (if needed)
Method of tracking submissions
Method of tracking judging responses
Sample text to announce winners
Website to showcase entrants
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Who are the judges?
What is the judging process?
What tool will be used to evaluate the submissions?
Who will host the tool, upload submissions, and provide the final results?
What is the judging rubric? (see below for suggestions)
Be sure to notify the winners!
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Videos and posters must explain information security problems and specific actions college and university students can take to safeguard their computers, mobile devices, or personal information. Positive, action oriented messages are highly recommended and will be viewed favorably during the judging process. Please refer to the STOP. THINK. CONNECT. Editorial Style Guide for for tips on the tone or feel of a message. Two categories of videos are being sought: videos of two minutes or less for use in training or instruction, and 30-second public service announcements (PSAs). Posters should be submitted separately.
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Professional (paid) assistance may not be used in production of the video and will be grounds for disqualification.
Faculty advisors may offer support by directing contestants to other students for assistance but cannot aid in the creative process.
Minimal credits (limited to 10 seconds) are allowed (but not required) at the end of the two minute or less videos.
Credits should not be included on 30-second PSAs.
Winning video submissions must be able to submit a word document (.doc) or text file (.txt) so that closed captions can be added.
Video submissions must meet certain technical requirements. For questions about the production guidelines, please e-mail us.
To coordinate with the Department of Homeland Security and NCSA STOP. THINK. CONNECT. campaign, videos should incorporate the “Stop. Think. Connect.” message in some way. For example, including the logo at the end of the video, showing the words somewhere in the video, or simply saying the phrase within the video. Please refer to the STOP. THINK. CONNECT. Editorial Style Guide for for tips on the tone or feel of a message.
Video submissions should meet the following supported YouTube formats: WebM files; .MPEG4, 3GPP, and MOV files; .AVI, .MPEGPS, .WMV; or .FLV. Here is a list of some common formats that YouTube does NOT support: project files; MSWMM and WLMP; audio files (MP3, WAV, etc.); and image files (JPEG, PNG, etc.). Visit the YouTube Supported Formats site for more details.
Poster Guidelines
Each poster entry must be original artwork by student(s) for a broad student audience. Professional assistance is not allowed and will disqualify any entry.
Digital resolution of each entry must be sufficient to be printed at a maximum of 24 inches (width) by 36 inches (height) without print scaling (minimum 300 dpi).
Students should leave 1.5 inches of white space at the bottom of the poster to allow for the addition of sponsor and/or institutional logos.
Electronic formats allowed: JPEG and PDF. File size should be no larger than 25MB. The artist is responsible for conversion to digital format.
To coordinate with the Department of Homeland Security and NCSA STOP. THINK. CONNECT. campaign, posters should incorporate the “Stop. Think. Connect.” message in some way. For example, including the logo somewhere in the body of the poster or in the slogan or messaging. Please refer to the STOP. THINK. CONNECT. Editorial Style Guide for for tips on the tone or feel of a message.
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Must use correct and consistent spelling, punctuation, grammar, and capitalization in all submissions.
Positive, action oriented messages are highly recommended and will be viewed favorably during the judging process. Please refer to the STOP. THINK. CONNECT. Editorial Style Guide for tips on the tone or feel of a message or visit the STOP. THINK. CONNECT. website.
May be about general security awareness or focus on one specific topic.
Must be generic (do not reference any specific college or university, applications, or vendors).
Must be in good taste and appropriate for multicultural college and university populations.
Must be appropriate for all institution types (needs to work for research universities, community colleges, and so forth).
Must address topics that will retain relevance for one to two years (avoid narrow technology-specific topics such as a specific threat, virus, and so forth).
Must be original and not infringe upon any copyright, trademark, or other proprietary right.
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