[PCA] WEB: North American Orchid Conservation Center needs your VOTE!

[Kwong, Olivia]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
*From:* Whigham, Dennis [mailto:whighamd at si.edu]

*Sent:* Monday, August 03, 2015 7:59 AM
*To:* Whigham, Dennis <whighamd at si.edu>
*Subject:* simply amazing



August 3, 2015



Dear Colleagues:



We are sending this to ask that you help significantly raise the North
American Orchid Conservation Center’s public visibility!  We need your help
and the help of everyone in your network of contacts.



At the end of my email is a description of a Smithsonian competition called
the Smithsonian Summer Showdown that takes place each year.  Public voting
for the “most seriously amazing” thing or project at the Smithsonian will
begin on August 6.  Our goal is to win the competition, but we face an
enormous uphill battle as we are only a small bit of an enormous
organization and we face competition from such icons as the Hope Diamond
and the National Zoo’s endangered species.  We believe, however, that we
can do it if we spread the word among the folks who appreciate native
plants and support our efforts to conserve native orchids.  As you will
read, there will be three rounds of competition.  If we can even get to the
final stage of the competition it will be an enormous boost to our efforts
to conserve native orchids.



We seek your help to spread the word and ask that you use every means
available to contact everyone in your network of contacts and encourage
them to reach out to their friends and acquaintances so that an enormous
number of supporters visit the web site and vote for NAOCC during each of
the three voting periods listed below.  *The can vote once each day*!



Thanks for your help and please feel free to contact me if you have any
questions.  We will be sending out a similar appeal using several email
lists.  If you get something like this again, sorry for the duplication! *
Also, let folks know that they can vote once per day during the three
rounds of voting*.



Let’s GO ORCHIDS





*ABOUT THE SHOWDOWN*



The Smithsonian Summer Showdown is a bracket-style voting competition for
the public to choose the most amazing thing at or about the Smithsonian.
The Smithsonian museums, research and cultural centers, and zoo, nominate
contestants in their subject category (art, science, history or culture)
and then battle the other contestants on social media with educational and
entertaining posts to convince the public that their contestant should win.
The public gets introduced to the many aspects of
the Smithsonian through a fun competition where they have to choose between
contestants, allowing them to learn more about parts of the Smithsonian
they didn’t know about before.



SERC’s nominee is the North American Orchid Conservation Center. There are
three rounds of voting, and the public can vote online once a day at
http://go.si.edu/voteorchid.



*Showdown Timetable:*

Round 1 (Thursday, Aug. 6 – Wednesday, Aug. 12) – Public votes once in each
category (science, art, history, culture). The top three advance. NAOCC
needs to be one of the top three for science to remain in the competition.

Round 2 (Thursday, Aug. 13-Tuesday, Aug 18) – Public votes once in each
category. The top entry in each category advances.

Round 3 (Wednesday, Aug. 19-Monday, Aug. 24) – Public votes on Final Four.
Tuesday, Aug. 25 – Winner crowned





*WHAT WILL APPEAR ON THE SHOWNDOWN WEB SITE ABOUT NAOCC*



*Smithsonian Environmental Research Center*
North American Orchid Conservation <http://northamericanorchidcenter.org/>

*CONTACTS:* Kristen Minogue; Heather Soulen

*PICK ME**: Protecting the world’s smartest plants*

*ABOUT ME: **More than 200 orchid species blossom in North America. Over
half are threatened or endangered somewhere. Beautiful, cunning and
occasionally deceptive, orchids are also red flags for extinction. When an
environment is in danger, orchids are often the first to go. That’s why
scientists launched the Conservation Center, a continent-wide network based
at the Smithsonian: because saving orchids can hold the key to saving
entire ecosystems.*







[image: SERC_50_RGB_smaller]Dennis Whigham

Senior  Botanist

Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

Box 28

Edgewater, MD 21037

Phone: 443-482-2226

Email: whighamd at si.edu
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