Brenda Hough here, live-blogging at the NetSquared Year 3 Conference. The 21 Featured Project sessions kicked things off Tuesday morning, giving each of the featured projects 2 minutes to provide an overview. Throughout the conference, these project teams will have an opportunity to display and discuss their Mashups and attendees will vote to select the best three. All 21 projects at the conference will receive a share of $100,000 in prize money. The dollar amount each project is awarded will be determined by voting at the conference. We'll be blogging about each of the presentations and projects here over the next two days.

It was a challenge for many of the presenters to boil down the energy and passion they feel for their projects within the two-minute timeframe, but representatives for each of the 21 projects all found creative ways to introduce participants to their innovative mashup projects. Some used stories, some used props ('is the water bottle half-empty or half-full?'), some used statistics and data, but they all urged participants to stop by their table displays and conference sessions to learn more. With this much innovation in the room, it's going to be hard to decide which of these amazing projects offers the most promise for social change. In addition to learning about the projects, conference attendees can provide feedback to help make them better. It's all about maximizing the wisdom of the crowd -- the crowd is you, me, here now.

In addition to blogging this here on the conference site, I'll be blogging this over on our MaintainIT blog, too.