The following is a special contribution to this blog by Will Barkis, Gigabit Developer Evangelist at Mozilla Foundation.
As the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) noted back in June, Mozilla and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have teamed up to run an app development challenge to build killer apps on ultra high speed, deeply programmable networks. In particular, this challenge is seeking apps and services that are impossible on today’s networks.
![Mozilla Ignite [image courtesy Mozilla].](http://www.cccblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/mozilla-ignite-1730.png "Mozilla Ignite [image courtesy Mozilla].")
The first phase, running through next Thursday, Aug. 23rd, is focused on ideation — and includes $15,000 in prizes for the best ideas. Imagine what you could do in a world where bandwidth, computing capacity, and access to large data sets are unlimited. Imagine if physical location did not determine your access to healthcare or education or workforce training. Imagine if you could interact with people and data and knowledge anywhere in rich, realistic real-time. Go to MozillaIgnite.org today to submit your ideas, and to comment upon what others have already suggested.
This is the stuff of dreams and science fiction. We challenge you to imagine it — and we also challenge you to build it.
![Hackanooga [image courtesy Mozilla Ignite].](http://www.cccblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/logo-hackanooga-450px.png "Hackanooga [image courtesy Mozilla Ignite]."){kind=logo}
On that note, on Sept. 14-16, Mozilla and the “Gig City” of Chattanooga, TN, will host a gigabit hackfest called “Hackanooga.” Meet talented hackers from all over, eat good food and make good friends, and most importantly — have fun hacking on a citywide gigabit network. Travel grants are available; click here to apply for one.
Finally, the app development phase of the challenge kicks off in September with proposals from teams due by Sept. 20. There will be three rounds of app development over six months with $485,000 to be awarded.
To learn more, check out MozillaIgnite.org. We look forward to seeing your ideas and what emerges from this challenge. And if you have questions, comments, feedback, or want to discuss ideas, please drop us a line at ignite@mozillafoundation.org — we’d be happy to discuss them with you.
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