The entire Squarepeg team is thrilled that you online voters decided to feature our work in the Netsquared conference this year. Thank you, thank you, thank you! After months of research, planning, and networking we are finally hitting the switch and moving forward full speed with this venture. We haven't launched a beta site yet, but almost every day now I hear about a friend, or a friend of a friend, or a friend of...etc... who is excited about our work. In the last few weeks, two more great people joined our small, creative team. Jonah and Polly will be helping us get the word out about Squarepeg, and help out the various groups of people who will use Squarepeg when the beta site is ready.  

I thrive on all this enthusiasm, and momentum, even when I work late or run out of coffee. We are still looking to expand our team though; in particular we would like to work with another Ruby on Rails developer or two. With that in mind, I would like to say specifically what all you excellent voters have done for us:

• We get to go to the netsquared conference, where we will probably meet a lot of cool people, and may convince one or more developers to work with us.
• This voting process was a great PR opportunity for us. Asking our friends and family to vote was a convenient excuse to discuss this work we are passionate about, and ask our friends and family if they have feedback or know anyone who might be interested in taking up the cause.  
• Becoming a featured project is pretty cool, and we are still letting a lot of people know about it. Maybe one of these people will know more tech savvy change makers who want to work with us?
• Oh yeah, money too. We get some share of $100,000. Pretty cool, hunh?
• Energy. That's right, taking that little risk of putting ourselves out there for judgement, and being selected was motivating for us. It's really nice to hear that other people think Squarepeg is a cool idea too.  

We are excited about the conference in May, but we definitely aren't waiting for the conference to move forward with our project. Come to think of it, maybe you shouldn't wait either! If you think back through your long list of friends and family, you can probably think of at least one web developer, or someone who commented on how the internet is such a high potential tool for social change. Maybe you should take this opportunity to reconnect with them, and put them in touch with us. Thanks!

cheers

Isaac and the Squarepeg team.