EDS: Green design could win you some greenbacks from Premier Farnell

Distributor Premier Farnell and its companies (Newark, Farnell, Premier Electronics, CPC, Farnell-Newark, and MCM) are once again offering up $100k to make this world a little greener.

The global electronics supply chain giant today at EDS announced Live EDGE 2008, its second annual international challenge in support of green design.

Live EDGE—the EDGE portion of which stands for Electronic Design for the Global Environment—aims to provide a forum where electronic design engineers and students can design products that are environmentally friendly through the use of electronic components. For example, a design that cuts carbon emissions or reduces energy consumption in an end product.

What’s changed from Premier Farnell’s first Live EDGE design contest? First, the company has decided to separate competitors into two categories: full-time students and the general/open category. In doing so, it will offer two first-place prizes, each consisting of $25k in cash and a design support package that Premier Farnell values at an additional $25k to move the designs toward production.

Like last year, the support package will include the services of an electronic design consultancy to help develop the design to prototype stage, assistance with legal matters and IP registration, some marketing and publicity, as well as Premier Farnell’s help in securing investment funding. Premier Farnell will also actively market the product to millions of customers globally through their leading edge Web site, catalog, and direct marketing.

In addition, up to three entrants for the full-time student category and three entrants for the general/open category will be eligible for honorable mentions, each receiving a cash prize of $5k.

Registration for news, updates, and activities begins today via the Live EDGE Web site or, for those of you out there with Facebook accounts, you can get info via the Live EDGE Design Challenge group on the social networking site—and here in lies a second change from the 2007 competition. Premier Farnell’s Americas arm Newark in a meeting with EDN earlier today said that the Live EDGE Web site will soon feature social-networking tools so that engineers can share and develop ideas. That is an especially significant portion of Live EDGE 2008, in my opinion, and not just because such a forum could help inspire innovation.

Premier Farnell is also looking to tap into new talent with Live EDGE. As we all know, there’s an engineering talent shortage, one that is being caused by the lack of students entering STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields of study and one that will only get worse as the Baby Boomers continue to retire. If you want to attract new blood, whether it be to STEM fields or to anything else, you need to speak the group’s language. And we need to attract Generation Y as an industry, no question about that. The babies of the Baby Boomers get social networking. They thrive in online environments and virtual worlds like Facebook and Second Life (environments and worlds that when I, an old lady in her thirties, enter, just don’t see the appeal of). Add-ons like social networking to tech sites will only encourage the next generation to consider engineering as a future.

Entries for Live EDGE 2008 can be submitted between October 1 and January 31, 2009. Judging will start on February 1, 2009, and winners will be announced on April 2, 2009. The competition is open to anyone age 18 or over. For more info on Live EDGE 2008, check out this short video from Premier Farnell CEO Harriet Green.

And while you’re on the Live EDGE site, check out the Live EDGE 2007 design winner. It’s a pretty cool product called MyFan, a ceiling fan that combines an electronically commutated motor and controller, and aerodynamically efficient blade design that reduces fan input power by up to 66% of that of a traditional ceiling fan. It also boasts auxiliary output channels that drive up to 20 watts of integrated LED lighting with up/down lighting modules. MyFan and its designer, John Noble from Malaysia, beat out 3,500 registrants from more than 102 countries in the 2007 Live EDGE challenge.

Post your thoughts on design contests, social networking as a way of attracting talent, or anything else below. And stay tuned to this blog for more from EDS.