You made it – you gathered all your notes together, poured yourself a big pot of coffee, spent seemingly unending hours at your computer screen… and got your proposal in before the 11:59:59 PM EDT deadline. Congratulations!! We’re very proud of you!! In November we’re going to be starting our next round of contests and there will be a new set of authors ready to contribute their ideas. So, while it’s still fresh in your memory, we want to know: If you could offer future proposal authors one piece of advice, what would it be?

Do something else. Fall in love, be happy, forget and do not think about the environment or what's happening, it's too depressing. After learning about it in the 80's, studying it in detail in the 90's and coming up with a solution around year 2000. All I've gotten is a few thanks from scientists for coming up with the idea but no help whatsoever. Besides that it's been attacks from the right for even talking about "global warming" (yelling right in my face insinuations that they'll beat the crap out of me if I continue talking about it), attacks from the left for talking about geoengineering (just got yelled at the other day by the guy in charge of CCL - eugene area for stating facts, then the guy totally ignores me and talks to a girl next to him), then in the geoengineering field I have to be able to defend my ideas from scientists who have no time to spend on my idea having thousands of people trying to run their ideas by them because anybody in the cutting edge of the field is busy working on something. Then they suppose things and ask stupid questions again and again enough to drive you crazy! At the end of the day you'll get no help and have to listen to the news about how 25,000 children a day or more are dying of starvation, then you add it up and over a billion will have died since you came up with a solution for starvation. As a response to people dying the most horrible death you see the people in charge laugh about global warming calling it a hoax, making a list of people involved calling them conspirators, as if Al Gore conspiring with farmers about corn ethanol to enrich themselves cancels out global warming, and stating that if thou doesn't work that thou shall not eat(as if one can rely on statements from people faced with torture for the rest of their life). Run I say, run from this field, run far and fast, fall in love, drink a lot and try to forget everything you've learned about this field.

Make sure your idea targets all contest categories like mine does...

I've had a great experience with Climate CoLab with quick responses from both fellows and judges. Although I'm sure some contests are slower than others owing to the time constraints of the judges. I would echo pj's comments about reaching out for collaboration with fellow CoLab members. Additional advice: research, research and then more research. Especially similar projects in your field. It does not distract from your idea if others have done something similar, and we should all seek to learn lessons from past endeavours: both the successes and the failures. Good luck everyone!

"If you could offer future proposal authors one piece of advice, what would it be?" To find and resolve the root causes of the climate change problem. Present proposals appear to be superficial solutions that attempt, in vain, to resolve intermediate causes rather than root causes. For example, C-ROADS is the core model in Climate CoLab. This model largely determines the paradigm people are using to solve the climate change problem, such as by "proposals outlining what they think should be done about climate change." However the C-ROADS model deals only with the technical (ecological) side of the problem. It excludes the social (people) side of the problem. Thus the model doesn't deal with the change resistance side of the problem, which is the crux. Those seriously interested in exploring this point may read these two papers: 1. Change Resistance as the Crux of the Environmental Sustainability Problem, at http://www.thwink.org/sustain/articles/009/ChangeResistanceAsCrux.htm 2. Endogeneity Considered Harmful, at http://www.thwink.org/sustain/publications/papers/index.htm#Endogeneity The second paper contains this extract, which applies to C-ROADS, the climate change problem, and Climate CoLab's mission "to address global climate change": "Consider the model without the change resistance subsystem in Figure 2 and the integrated world models it emulates. It is not enough to say to a decision maker “Here, run this integrated world model with this interactive user interface. It will show you how different policies play out. Spend some time at the wheel and pick those policy mixes that work best for you. Then go out and promote and implement them.” That is inadequate because the model is incomplete. The model boundary excludes the policy resistance portion of the problem, so the decision maker cannot realistically tell how the world’s social-ecological system will respond. In the sustainability problem they would be sailing into disaster, because to our knowledge none of the solutions simulated by current integrated world models deal with overcoming change resistance at the root cause level. Instead, they whack away at the IPAT factors." I apologize for the complexity of this post, but this is a complex problem and needs to be dealt with in a complex manner. Past proposals are a bit too simple to significantly "address global climate change." What's needed is a commitment to first finding the root causes of the problem. Then solutions that resolve the root causes may be far more easily found. Love what you're trying to do. Hope this helps.

Contribute with something that make sense and give what people are interested with.

Thank you to all those who added their advice and suggestions here, it helped me improve on my proposal writing skills and what to look out for when I write. So far I have had a great experience with the Co-Lab.

@MIT is this "real"? How much time will i spend on this site hoping to change the world before it goes into the Internet Archives? The world will pass away but the Internet Archives are here to stay! WiserEarth,org - CotW.cc - 350.org .. fade.. fade.. f.a.d.e... It's great work but it's difficult to find sponsors! I'd like to thank my sister for letting me borrow her computer. Hiya @blindspotter. Good to see you here.