If I had to vote today....my 'slate' of projects

To introduce myself, I'm the founder (in 1987) and president of CompuMentor/TechSoup, the parent organization of NetSquared. That said, we're committed to an open, transparent process and my votes will count as much and no more than anyone else's. And *that* said, we are facing a nice problem, but a problem all the same, and this blog entry is an attempt to address it.

The problem is that the first stage of NetSquared Year Two has been far more successful than we envisioned. To remind you, the first stage was about getting projects from around the world to nominate themselves for the NetSquared community's consideration. We hoped to attract at least 50 projects from which 20 Featured Projects would be selected to participate in and compete at the Conference at Cisco on May 29-30. As of this writing, there are 80+ projects listed on the site. The pace is actually quickening. We expect 100+ projects to be nominated by the close of the nomination phase this Friday, April 6.

Now we must move from quantity to quality. We must do this in the clear context of our commitment to a community-based decision process. And we have to be aware that in this uncharted turf there are going to be some very subjective judgments. We have three axes--sustainability, technology and social impact--but voters are going to weight these very differently from each other.

We plan to use a system that gives each voter (there are 1800 registered N2 site users as of this moment) between five and ten votes. Quite possibly we will make it mandatory to cast all of them for separate projects for one's vote to be considered. This will mitigate possibliity of system being gamed by bloc voting. We're working on the details.

It takes a long time to review 100+ projects; very few will do it. (I've done it for the 80+ to date, so am speaking from experience here). To give voters some assistance and context for making their choices, we will be inviting the whole community to offer their 'slates' of projects. We ask that each slate be prefaced with some self-introduction by the reviewer, so readers will have some sense of the perspective being brought to bear. We will publicize these slates on the front page of the site as they come in. We expect them to be an important factor in people's decision-making.

So, with that preface, I'll go first. I invite you all to do the same.

Please weigh in!

If I had to vote today....my 'slate' of projects

Reserving the right to be persuaded by others and/or by new information until the close of nominations, these are the 10 projects that I have found most compelling to date:

http://www.netsquared.org/projects/proposals/building-a-community-of-mod...

Not your U.S. Civil War genre John Brown. This is a remarkable melding of a sustainability model with a fierce social vision.

http://www.netsquared.org/projects/proposals/chipin-scalable-affordable-...

Carnet Williams has earned respect over the years. This is a .com that really gets the .org world. Of the distributed fundraising (badge) projects, this has the ring of scale and impact.

http://www.netsquared.org/projects/proposals/farmer-2-farmer-learning

Wonderful application of technology to problem. Shows clear understanding of the social web.

http://www.netsquared.org/projects/proposals/givewell-clear-fund

I have some questions, but the donor transparency element makes this one different.

http://www.netsquared.org/projects/proposals/moulin-wiki-offline-wikiped...

This is the most counter-intuitive, spot-on project. Brilliant.

http://www.netsquared.org/projects/proposals/newstrust

I want this one to work. And maybe it can.

http://www.netsquared.org/projects/proposals/nonprofit-organizations-mys...

An idea whose time has come?

http://www.netsquared.org/projects/proposals/reversed-rural-electrificat...

This is a huge idea with a lot of thought behind it.