Fight Aging!

Google is running an initiative called Project 10¹⁰⁰, similar to the Amex Members Project that the Methuselah Foundation volunteers and healthy life extension community recently took a swing at winning. People are invited to submit ideas for charitable projects that will benefit humanity; Google employees winnow down the (no doubt thousands of) entries to the 100 they like the most; the public at large vote on the 100; and an advisory board picks five to split $10 million in funding. From the FAQ:

Q: How will you decide which ideas to fund?
A: A selection of Google employees will review all the ideas submitted and select 100 for public consideration. The 100 top ideas will be announced on January 27, 2009, at which point we will invite the public to select twenty semi-finalists. An advisory board will then choose up to five final ideas for funding and implementation. We plan to announce these winners in early February.

Q: Who is on the advisory board?
A: The advisory board will be composed of five to seven individuals known for their expertise in the submission categories.

Q: What criteria will be used to select the winning ideas?
A: The following five criteria will be considered by the advisory panel in evaluating and selecting the winning ideas:

Reach: How many people would this idea affect?
Depth: How deeply are people impacted? How urgent is the need?
Attainability: Can this idea be implemented within a year or two?
Efficiency: How simple and cost-effective is your idea?
Longevity: How long will the idea's impact last?

...

Q. How will Google implement these ideas?
Once we've selected up to five ideas for funding, we will begin an RFP process to identify the organization(s) and proposals that are in the best position to help implement the selected ideas.

Q: I know an organization that I believe can implement my idea if it is selected. What should I do?
The submission form includes a field where you can recommend an organization to implement your idea. If your idea is selected for funding, we will contact this organization when we begin the selection process for the implementation phase. Please note that this does not guarantee that they will be chosen to implement the idea.

As for the Amex Members Project there is a disconnect between voting and the advisory board choice: there is no guarantee that strong support for a longevity science proposal that made it into the top 100 would see it funded. But it costs little for us to try - if you don't swing at the balls that come out of the blue, you certainly won't hit any of them into the outfield.

The submission deadline for ideas is October 20th. I encourage you all to think carefully about a good longevity science project to submit for consideration to Project 10¹⁰⁰:

• Is the project scope appropriate for a $1-2 million award?
• Are you referencing the organizations you think best able to carry it out - such as the Methuselah Foundation?
• Carefully consider Google's requirements - especially the time requirement for implementation, given the way in which medical research works.

Other than that - have at it! This is a competition of merit in the early stages: if you think your plan has merit, then submit it. It doesn't matter if someone else has submitted a similar plan, and in fact I suspect that volume of similar (not the same, but similar) project submissions is a metric all of its own by which Google staff will judge merits. The more varied project submissions there are relating to engineered longevity, the more likely it is that Google employees sympathetic to the cause will see them and move one or more of them ahead into the top 100.