Help > Spring eBird Contest

The contest is now closed. Thanks to everyone who entered!

We invite you to participate in the first ever Science Pipes eBird contest. We've conjured up this contest as a way to introduce the eBird community to Science Pipes. "What's Science Pipes" you ask? It's a way for you to play with and visualize eBird data by creating a "pipe" that defines the visualization. Skip ahead for more info about eBird in Science Pipes...

Categories  |  Prizes  |  How to Enter  |  More About Science Pipes  |  Timeline  |  Rules  |  Gotchas  |  More Resources  | 

Categories

• Community Choice Award - presented to the pipe with the highest rating by the user community 
• Best eBird Visualization Award - recognizes the most interesting visualization of eBird data; chosen by eBird and Science Pipes staff

Prizes

Besides fame and recognition, each winner will receive:

• A one-year subscription to Birds of North America Online 
• A copy of "Voices of North American Owls", a 2-CD audio guide produced by the Macaulay Library at the Lab of Ornithology

How to Enter

1. Create a pipe
2. Submit your pipe to the contest

Through April 12, you may submit up to three pipes to the contest. If you submit more than three, the extras will be ignored.

Since the community will be rating your pipes, you will want to make sure to provide a good summary of what the pipe does in the "description" section when you create your pipe.

More About Science Pipes

While eBird provides a number of reports and ways to look at data, we want to open the ability to develop ways to look at data. There are now over 30 million records in eBird and Science Pipes will be a way for you to explore these data.  Note that the data in science pipes are coming from a snapshot of eBird data in the Avian Knowledge Network. They only contain records through Jan. 15, 2010 and are not updated in real time. (More info about the eBird dataset that Science Pipes uses.)

What can you use Science Pipes for? Let’s get started by looking at a simple pipe using eBird data:

You see other results from this pipe. If you sign in to Science Pipes, you can run this pipe for yourself and create your own pipes by connecting components in a visual environment. The visual representation of the plumbing for this pipe is below.

 

(Click for a larger view.)

There are many more examples of using eBird data with Science pipes.

We have an ever-growing set of resources you can use to learn about Science Pipes. See the bottom of this article for a more complete list, but you may want to start with the following:

• a video demo of creating a basic pipe
• a tutorial that walks you through building an eBird pipe
• examples of the kinds of things you can do with Science Pipes and eBird data
• a description of the components that you can use to build eBird pipes
• more information about the eBird dataset used in Science Pipes (note that Science Pipes doesn't currently use "live" eBird data)

Timeline

• April 12, 2010 11:59pm ET - deadline for contest submissions; enter your pipe here
  
• April 13, 2010 - submissions publicized; voting for Community Choice Awards begins
• April 26, 2010 8:00am ET - public voting for Community Choice Award ends
• April 26, 2010 - awards and prizes announce

Rules

• Everybody is welcome to participate; there is no need to be an active eBirder.
• eBird volunteers (e.g., volunteer reviewers) may participate and are eligible for awards.
• Cornell Lab of Ornithology staff are welcome to participate but are not eligible for awards.
• Each contestant may submit at most three pipes, but each contestant may win at most one award.
• Everyone except Cornell Lab of Ornithology staff may rate pipes to help select the Community Choice Award.
• Contestants are encouraged to invite their friends to come to the site and rate their pipes.
• Programmatically jury-rigging ratings and other shenanigans are not allowed.
• Science Pipes and eBird staff have final say over any disputes.
• These rules may change at any time.

Gotchas

Science Pipes isn't perfect. We've found a few problems of which you should be aware. Most importantly, the pipe editor doesn't play nice with Internet Explorer. So, Science Pipes is best explored with Firefox or some other browser instead.

More Resources

• Questions? Contact us.
• All Science Pipes help.
• Science Pipes bugs that may affect your eBird pipe.