NetSquared enables social benefit organizations to leverage the tools of the social web.
net2 updates
Building community in your area? Check out the newly-launched Community Organizers Handbook! Everything you need to start and grow a NetSquared Local group or any other community-powered program.
net2 local
NetSquared Local events provide a chance to connect locally with all those interested in the intersection of social technologies and social change. There are new groups forming every week: Join in!
net2 updates
Building community in your area? Check out the newly-launched Community Organizers Handbook! Everything you need to start and grow a NetSquared Local group or any other community-powered program.
the Hope Meter
Challenges Entered:
Stumbleupon users download a plug-in for their SU toolbar that adds the Hope Meter up and down buttons. Rather than ranking the quality/interest of the page they rank whether the subject of the page makes them feel more/less hopeful about the future. One could easily like an article (thus Stumble it up) but find it makes one less hopeful (thus HopeMetering it down).Integrating with clipmarks.com, users may rank sections rather than whole pages. Like other social indexing sites, users tag pages and provide notes/review as to why it makes them feel more/less hopeful.Data from the rankings would be displayed on the Hope Meter site with a visual representation of the collective rankings of all users. Clicking on/searching a particular tag shows the hope rank of that meme and the sites contributing to that ranking. Each hope ranker would have an account with their own ranking and access to all the pages they hope-marked. Because people are cataloging pages according to social relevance (rather than "coolness") their user page inadvertently creates a social-currency database. Users of the site’s forum have more informed debates because they have immediate access to all sources. However, this benefit, while driving users to the site, is secondary to the purpose of giving people the empowerment to tabulate the direction the world is heading.
What else have you done in this area of work?
I have recently set up a blog to talk about feelings of hopelessness related to the global warming crisis (wordpress.feelingapocalyptic.com) but I realized that what I wanted was not a personal outlet but something participatory. I have extensive experience offline as an organizer for everything from grassroots movements (a campaign I worked on) to community service projects ( as an Americorps volunteer) to NGO beauracracies (former director of CPE).