Net Squared Mashup Challenge
February 29th, 2008 by seth bindernagel
Last year, Chris Hofmann and I participated in Net Squared’s annual conference as judges of a challenge that awarded various social enterprises leveraging technology and the Web to create social change. Frank Hecker from Mozilla Foundation also supported the conference by providing some funding. You might remember that Miro (who was at that time changing their name from The Democracy Player) participated in the conference and was one of three finalists who took home an award. (Mozilla Corp also granted $100,000 to Miro through the Participatory Culture Foundation to support Miro.)
It’s that time of year again and NetSquared approached me with new ideas for the upcoming conference, specifically describing a “mashup challenge”. The NetSquared Mashup Challenge will bring together a unique mix of people from the public and private sectors to develop and release mashups designed to provide deeper insight into the social issues affecting communities around the globe. The challenge is managed through a process that emphasizes community engagement, participation, and collaboration. NetSquared asked me to think about organizations who might participate. They also asked if any developers had interest in working with the organizations that are already enrolled in the challenge. I offered to blog about it, so if you’re interested just let me know and I can connect you with NetSquared. Nominated projects can be found here. Finally, if you know an organization who should participate and you’d like to work on the mashup with them, send me a note and we can make it happen.
Last year’s challenge brought together 21 organizations and supplied a variety of resources, including a share of the $100,000 Innovation Fund to help those organizations move their social web projects forward. It was a good experience and I’m looking forward to helping again.
Hello Seth!
I’m now working on a social networking project which is oriented on young people who are studing TV producing and other creative media arts. The project in it’s current state is kind of mash-up itself, at we use Ning as a social network platform, and embeding Ning feeds to ourr main site, using social video services too.
The organisation behind the project is Foundation for Social Development “World withjut Borders”, who organised TV producing classes for children, and engaged me to work on this internet project.
It isn’t clear to me if it’s correct to go for the challenge, but maybe some developers would like to help us, and the result may be good enough for the challenge.
Hi Seth,
Thanks for spreading the word about the NetSquared Mashup Challenge!
Britt
Britt Bravo
Community Builder
NetSquared • A Project of Tech Soup
http://www.netsquared.org
bbravo@techsoup.org
Thanks for the note, Nick. So, just to be clear, you’d like to find some developers who might participate with you in the Net Squared Mashup Challenge? Have you received any response yet?
Seth, i replied in email
Hi Seth,
I saw that you were writing about the Netsquared Mashup challenge and I wanted to share a little bit about our Mashup Challenge entry: Assetmap.org/uganda. You can read more at http://www.assetmap.org/uganda
The question behind the project is this: with peace on the horizon after 20 years of war in northern Uganda, and the big NGOs soon heading off to other war zones, who is going to support community organizations and northern Ugandan civil society as it transitions to peace time?
By mapping information about ongoing community-led philanthropic partnerships in northern Uganda, assetmap.org/uganda helps American citizens aggregate their resources to support post-conflict transformation.
We hope to facilitate collaboration among American donors and volunteers by providing a digital tool that:
•maps project locations so you know who’s working where
•tags information about the specific issues projects and organizations seek to address
•links tagged and mapped projects to the facebook and LinkedIn profiles of participating donors or volunteers
If you’re interested in supporting us, please visit and vote for us here:
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/assetmap-org-uganda
Thanks!
Nathaniel Whittemore
Director, Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement
http://www.mycge.org
globalengagement at gmail