NetSquared enables social benefit organizations to leverage the tools of the social web.

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We've opened registration for the 2008 NetSquared Conference (N2Y3). The Conference will be held at Cisco Systems' Vineyard Conference Center in San Jose, California on May 27 and 28 (just after Memorial Day).

View the N2Y3 21 Featured Projects, Register for the Net2 Conference, see the working Agenda. Participate in the DonateNow Mashup Challenge and check out the Yahoo! Green Award.

community

Change Broadcasting Channels

3
stars

What will change in the world because this Project happens?

People are becoming more socially responsible, and want to be up-to-date with news about social change and impact. Plus, they are self organizing in online and real world communities to work together and bring change.

CBC (Change Broadcasting Channels) allows users to select channels of social change, and receive instant news about these channels on a mobile phone through SMS or twitter. Every channel has a community of subsribers that use the community tools to promote and share big stories and events. create momentum to find solutions to problems and trigger change.

Today there are a few barriers to getting instant access to socially relevant news:

· Relevant news needs to be obtained from sites dedicated to socially responsibility.

· Most of these sites have information from blogs and RSS feeds. Very few if any, have information from global news wires.

· These sites by nature offer a pull-based model, rather than an alert-based one where the user is notified of any news of interest as it happens.

· The user does not have much flexibility in choosing the news they want to track.

The idea of Change Broadcasting Channel is to create channels of news about issues of social change, and the endpoint for these channels is your mobile phone. Twitter serves basic phones with only SMS functionality. Flurry serves phones with a data plan.

A user can subscribe to an existing channel or create their own, based on a set of keywords.

Each channel has a community which is the group of subscribers to the channel. And this community gets triggers (the SMSes/twitters from a river of news) that create momentum, driving them to address their cause.

CBC will also integrate with http://www.groundreport.com to bring real user-reporting on channels mixed with mainstream media news from Daylife.

Change Broadcasting Channels will change the world by instantly informing socially active individuals of news of their interest, eliminating any delay in action. These users are part of communities where they actively use the modern tools to bring out the most relevant stories and issues and cultivate a discussion to find solutions.

1. DonorTrust

What will change in the world because this Project happens?

We envision a twofold change. The developing world [DW] will be lifted onto the first step of the ladder out of poverty and towards development they control; and N.Americans will recapture meaning through connection to something beyond themselves and something that will change the world.

Because DonorTrust (DT) will set a new bar for Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) doing project work, we won't leave these NPOs without a solution. DT is OpenSource-any NPOs can use it and be empowered to live up to the NPO promise-to take care of the funds donors entrust to us, and then to PROVE IT!

DT builds community by:
- DT is a technology that empowers community-to-community (C-2-C) philanthropy. Classrooms, families, departments in corporations can create an online community to change the world by giving to communities in the [DW]. We are creating a tighter link between these communities.
- DT facilitates more personal communication between the individuals within communities - empowering people to reach out, ask questions, share thoughts, and become one community.
- Community in N.America will be enhanced by sharing in a common goal: participating in lifting villages out of poverty
- We will connect classrooms in N.America with those in the [DW] through DT, empowering students around the globe to work together on projects, learning from one another and together.
- DT is about empowering everyday people to do something about a cause they are passionate about. The technology will decouple the typical components in an Int'l development NPO:
a) advocacy
b) project implementation
c) back-office / admin.
By decoupling these components we can empower a person passionate about a particular cause or region (e.g. water, or Kenya) to advocate for those specific projects and we take care of the rest-crowd-sourcing advocacy, and allowing people to build their own communities in N.America.
-Macro: we want to build the community of the generation that ends extreme poverty. We provide the tools for people to join to change the world. Much like generations that came before us that were part of the peace movement, ending apartheid, ending slavery, or ending communism - DT will provide the ability for THIS generation to stand up and make a difference.

Your Mapper - Know Your Neighborhood

Featured Project
11
stars

What will change in the world because this Project happens?

Three major empowering things would be improved in the world if this project happens.

One: Empowering local public citizens to learn about their neighborhood and take action when they identify a need. Citizens can view interesting things happening around their home and office on a map, and get notified when new things happen.

Two: Empowering local people to collect information that is currently locked up in government databases, and use our toolset to load that data and make it geographically and visually accessible to the public.

Three: Empowering local websites, blogs, news organizations, and companies by allowing them to embed searchable, interactive maps on their site as a service to their site audience.

Your Mapper is an online news organization that empowers people to obtain and load information in their home town, and make it available to their neighbors. We provide the tools that make this happen.

People who load the data (called "Mappers") only have to decide on what data they want, contact their local government agency for it, and assemble it into a spreadsheet. Once the spreadsheet is ready we provide the tools to load it into Your Mapper, turn it into a public searchable map, and let the Mappers manage the data online and updates to the data.

People who look at the the online maps (called "Citizens") can type in any address in the United States, and see a list of all the maps available. They can subscribe to feeds and updates and downloads. Each map will have meta information provided by the Mappers, and Citizens can rate the quality of the data and map content, leave comments, flag inappropriate data, and save their favorite maps.

The community aspects and rating system ensures that the best maps bubble to the top of the site, and even allow Mappers in the same city to 'compete' to load the highest quality, most valuable information to for the Citizens.

Local websites and businesses (called "Community Sites") can choose which maps they might like to put on their own websites, choose the starting point, map size, and other options, and with a little cut & paste can have these maps on their site in no time.

Host

Cisco

Sponsors

  • Microsoft
  • Yahoo
  • Business Objects
  • Raincity Studios
  • Mozilla Foundation
  • Ready Talk
  • .
  • Adobe
  • Linden Lab
  • Network For Good
  • Wild Apricot
  • Stanford Social Innovation Review
  • L'Atelier North America
  • The Panelist
  • Good
  • Fora.tv
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