By Tam Nguyen, Nguoi Viet
When you listen to great inventors tell the story of how their inventions came to being, there inevitably is a doodle involved.
A drawing on a cocktail napkin at a party. Or a sketch on a tablet kept by the bed. Or a doodle during a classroom lecture when a young mind is otherwise engaged in fantasy instead of physics.
For Paul Nong, his doodle could earn him a $30,000 college scholarship ― and a chance for his drawing to be seen by millions of people.
A junior at Burnsville High School, a suburb south of Minneapolis, Nong received word Thursday that he is Minnesota’s winner in the annual Doodle 4 Google contest. This year’s theme is “If I Could Invent One Thing to Make the World a Better Place…”, and judges determined that Nong’s work was the top of the Minnesota entries.
An assembly at Burnsville High School on Thursday recognized Paul Nong and his design. Photo courtesy of Burnsville High School.
The winner now will be determined by an online vote for the public, with voting open through 5 p.m. PDT on May 9. Nong’s art can be found at https://www.google.com/doodle4google/vote.html#d=d5-5.
To say that Nong was stunned to hear he was a finalist in the competition, which garnered more than 100,000 entries from students in kindergarten through 12th grade, is an understatement.
When he saw he had two missed calls from an unknown number on his phone, he called the number and heard the news from Google.
“When I called them back, I was freaking out wondering if this was for real,” Nong said.
Nong said his parents couldn’t believe it was real, either. But once they were convinced, the proud parents starting calling friends and relatives to garner votes for their son.
Voters who visit the website will see Nong’s work, which is a whimsical picture of the brain at work during a dream, which he calls “The Dream Machine.”
Nong said he got the idea for his entry after thinking about how people don’t have enough hours in the day to get their work done.
“Maybe we can use our dreams to be able to do things and get things done in our sleep and make it time efficient,” Nong said.
His drawing involves the idea of a machine that will help people to finish their work while dreaming in their sleep. The design has silhouettes of people sleeping on both ends, with images of hot air balloons and ribbons with people floating in the air in the middle, ultimately spelling out the word Google.
Paul Nong’s design of “The Dream Machine.” Photo from Google.
Nong drew his entry in color pencils and charcoal, later editing it using computer software to enhance the design.
Part of the reason the win stunned Nong so much is that he had never won – or even entered – an art competition of any kind. He said his history teacher encouraged him to enter this contest.
Nong started to draw for fun at age 5.
“When I really became serious about drawing, I learned to draw the right way by learning techniques around seventh or eighth grade,” he said.
Nong said his career goal is to work as a concept artist, such as designing sets for movies, or in the video game world. He hopes to attend the University of Minnesota, and the Google scholarship could help toward those expenses. If he wins the contest, his school also will receive a $50,000 Google for Education technology grant.
Next up for Nong: a trip to Google headquarters in California for the final awards ceremony on May 21. Each of the 50 state winners will receive an Android tablet and a T-shirt emblazoned with their doodle.
At the ceremony, the competition will be whittled to five, with four national finalists also receiving a $5,000 college scholarship. The grand-prize winner will receive the $30,000 scholarship and other prizes, and also will see the winning doodle featured on the U.S. Google.com home page on June 9 for 24 hours.
