Summer of Math Exposition #2

Hey Everyone,

Last year, Jame Schloss and I organized what we called the Summer of Math Exposition (SoME1), a contest for online math explainers. I can't tell you how fun and rewarding it was to see the quality of some of the entries, so we're doing it again. (See last year's announcement and results).

Last week we've kicked things off for another iteration. So if you or anyone you know has ever thought of putting together an explanation of some mathematical topic and posting online, whether that's as a video, a blog post, a game, a webcomic, or whatever else you have in mind, consider taking this summer as a chance to try it out.

Submissions will be due on August 15th, and as with last year we'll have a process for selecting winners which begins with a peer review phase to sift out ~100 top entries that James and I (together with some other judges) can look through them closely, and select winners from there. The peer-review phase is also an important component as it gives everyone a chance to look through at least a few other entries, and offer comments, constructive criticism, or encouragement.

Brilliant offered to contribute $5k for us to distribute as prize money, which we'd distribute evenly among 5 winners. I also got some gold pi plushies to send to each, because why not.

A few days ago Google Fonts reached out to offer $10k more to distribute at our discretion as prizes. Based on how hard it was to choose winners last year, what I'm inclined to do is simply choose 10 more "runners up" that we distribute winnings to. If any of you are part of organizations that would find value in offering prizes to top entries in a contest like this, feel free to reach out to me at grant@3blue1brown.com

The most exciting thing about last year was how even before I made an announcement video and featured winners, many of the best entries had already started to pick up a fair bit of traction. I think the mere act of having a group of people all make math explainers around the same time, while reviewing and commenting on one another work, helped kick start a viewer base for nascent creators. Also, 1 year later, when we ran the analytics on all the video entries from last year (simply because those are the easy ones to count), they've collectively accumulated over 15 million views, which is outstanding!

We also have an added twist this year.

I've always thought it'd be interesting to play matchmaker between domain experts like mathematicians, teachers, professionals, etc., and content producers, like animators, videographers, web developers, etc. So this year we've also set up a space where anyone with an idea for a good math explainer, but who lacks the time or technical know-how to produce the content they envision on their own, can post a pitch. And likewise, any content producers who would rather pair together with an expert than just work from their own ideas can post their portfolio.

See this GitHub repo for details. There are already over 100 requests for collaborations, many of which look quite good already. If any of you are professors/teachers/professionals with such an idea or creators with a bit of a portfolio, consider adding a pitch of your own. As my own way of contributing to the event, I'll be looking through them, and am tentatively planning to partner with one or two to produce a 3b1b video.

More details will be available through this summer through posts on this substack, so anyone interested in participating should subscribe there. We also have a discord.

I'm excited to see what comes of it!
Grant