News Release

The 2nd Life Stories Awards series “Moving Moments & Inspiring Happenings”, created jointly by the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and National Tsing Hua University and sponsored by Altek Corporation, was formally launched on 17 November 2008 and will run for four months. Using the innovative ITRI-developed ‘Tagala’ Internet time & space platform, participants are invited to submit real-life, touching stories in an amalgam of words and images. Altek is sponsoring its latest GPS camera to help school clubs participate fully in this activity as well as to reward the best submissions.



Awards for this year’s competition are impressive. In addition to cash awards for 100 finalist nominees, competitors also have the chance to earn GPS enabled digital cameras, mobile phones, specially designed glass trophies and overseas travel packages, among others. Awards are intended to encourage continued creativity and inspire all to capture their precious moments in ‘time and space’. To ensure the fairness of judging, sponsors have designed a two-tier selection committee framework. In the first, charities will be asked to select from all submissions the best 100 nominees, whose entries will be reviewed by a panel of 10 university representatives for final award recognition.

The Life Stories Awards program was begun under the 2006 Life Stories Hall Project run by Tsing Hua University, a project designed to enhance empathy, life awareness and compassion for others among university students. When Tsing Hua organizers announced the first call for written submissions at the end of 2007, they were overwhelmed by hundreds of entries from students in various fields sent in within the brief 1-1/2 month period. To date, Tsing Hua Life Stories Hall has registered over 40 thousand visits.

This year’s Life Stories competition will be the first to use ITRI’s Tagala Internet time & space platform. Submissions, under the theme ‘Moving Moments & Inspiring Happenings’, are limited to original works done by the entrant, and must be a ‘montage’ work, incorporating both words and images and describing a particularly moving moment or true story. Activity details, rules and other information are available via the official website: http://lifemap.tagala.tw. After registering a blog and finishing verification procedures, participants will be ready to create their submission. Text, photographs, video and artwork may all be combined online in order to share and enrich our common experience and to share and grow with friends from around the world.