NetSquared offering $100K for Mash-ups for Social Change

My buddy Glitteractica sends out a cool challenge being promoted by the NetSquared conference for technology mash-ups for social change. If you have a cool idea combining different web, mobile or other tech that meets some need in your community, draft it up and send it in to NetSquared by March 14.  Here's some examples:

• Maplight.org displays the link between money and politics by bringing together information about campaign contributions and legislative votes.
• ChicagoCrimes.org is a browsable database of crimes in Chicago that lets users see information displayed on a map.
• ActiveTrails shows visitors a list of active hiking and biking trails across the United States. Users play a big role in supplying information.
• Tunisian Prison Map pulls from a variety of sources to locate the prisons on a map and links to videos and other information relating to the prisons.

On March 24 the top 20 mashups will be announced, and the winners will be invited to attend this year’s NetSquared Conference (N2Y3) in San Jose, CA from May 27-28. At the Conference, project teams will have an opportunity to display and discuss their mashups, and attendees will vote to select the top three. All twenty projects at the Conference will receive a share of $100,000 in prize money.

To submit your project and for more info, go to http://www.netsquared.org/mashup.

Comments

[Britt Bravo]

Thanks for spreading the word about the NetSquared Mashup Challenge, Rik!

Britt Bravo/ Paix Writer

Community Builder
NetSquared • A Project of Tech Soup
www.netsquared.org
bbravo@techsoup.org

[Nathaniel Whittemore]

Hi Rik,

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
www.mycge.org
globalengagement at gmail

[rikomatic]

Sounds really neat! Thanks for sharing this!