Hi, everyone; my name is JC, and this is my first community blog post. I'm one of the authors of the HungerMaps proposal. I'm also a GIS enthusiast, so I wanted to bring your attention to the great GIS projects that have been submitted to this contest.

I've briefly summarized these below, and encourage the authors of these proposals to chime in, especially if you feel I've misrepresented your project. I've also posted some general thoughts about the voting process below.

Name: HungerMaps
What it does: Provides on-the-fly mapping and data sharing for anti-hunger advocates
Finance plan: Software as a service, professional services, and grants/donations
Geographic Scope: USA
Issue Focus: Hunger

Name: Low-Cost, Shared GIS…
What it does: Will provide mapping templates and hosting for issue advocates
Finance plan: One-time grant infusion of $100k to develop the basic tool, and support from parent org
Geographic Scope: USA
Issue Focus: Undefined (nonprofits and local governments)

Name: Map The Van
What it does: Tracks progress of 3 vans serving NYC's homeless population
Finance plan: Already financed
Geographic Scope: NYC
Issue Focus: Homelessness

Name: Maps 2.0 Geospatial Tools…
What it does: Will create a clearinghouse for GIS "best practices"
Finance plan: Startup provided by partners; ongoing expenses only "$500 per month"
Geographic Scope: Global
Issue Focus: Undefined (humanitarian relief)

Name: OpenStreetMap
What it does: Maintains a public wiki of GIS-related resources, best practices etc.
Finance plan: Already financed; N. American expansion appears to rely on grants
Geographic Scope: UK / USA
Issue Focus: Undefined

Name: ParkScan.org
What it does: Builds maps of citizen observations to communicate with park officials
Finance plan: Already financed; expansion to rely on foundations and corporate sponsorship
Geographic Scope: San Francisco
Issue Focus: Parks

General Thoughts:

How can we choose among 148 proposals? NetSquared wants us to consider each proposal with the following criteria:

1) the deepest social benefit potential
2) the smartest and most innovative utilization of new web-based tools and
3) the clearest strategies for financial sustainability

Deepest Social Benefit:

To me, this is a question about scope. Which proposals have a scope that is both bold and realistic? Do we want to fund projects that expect to reach an entire continent of farmers, or those that benefit the workings of a small organization in a single U.S. city? Or do we want a balance something that supports a large, but well-defined community of users in a fundamental way?

Smartest utilization of tools:

There is an unfortunate tendency in online communities for us to believe our own hype. We tend to fixate on new tools themselves rather than the purpose to which they are bent, resulting in a few of these proposals sounding like for-profit startups from the late ‘90s ("Business plan? Dude, we've got the Internet!"). "Smart" to me means voting for proposals that focus technology on meeting a defined social need not just getting the general universe of do-gooders to "hold hands and see what happens." I really believe we need to focus on engaging solvable social issues rather than building solutions for problems that no one has identified yet create products, as opposed to process.

Financial Sustainability:

In light of the proposals I've read, this question confuses me. Not unlike the recent Squidoo Org2.0 contest, we've got proposals running the gamut from the already-financed ("Financial plan: Don't worry about it, we're rich!") to the barely notional ("Financial plan: You're it."). Can these really be evaluated in the same basket? I personally think NetSquared's money would be best spent on proposals that have already created a product or service, but are still in start-up mode neither notional, nor the tech-savvy arm of an existing NGO.

Of course, I think HungerMaps meets all these criteria, and deserves your vote and that's the last I'll say of that. But there are many other projects that I fear will be overlooked if we focus too much on potential, rather than actual, solutions. So, I would encourage everyone not to vote for proposals that sound like they might change things, but for those that demonstrably will.