Net2 2011 Featured Projects: Earth Tipping Point

laneystrange
Posted 1 year 25 weeks ago
by laneystrange
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Yesterday, we told you a little about Expert Patient, a patient advocacy system created by Manuel Gill and submitted to the NetSquared project gallery earlier this year. Today, we’re talking Earth Tipping Point, another project that caught our attention in 2011. ETP is a network and collaboration system focused on implementing environmental ideas and solutions, and it crossed through the NetSquared project gallery a few months ago.

Back in 2008, environmentalist and ETP founder Kamal Merhebi, looking to accelerate real-world impact, put his finger on three key, related revelations:

  • Individuals with a shared goal can truly catalyze global change. 
  • Social networks are a great way to stay in touch with friends, family, and others, but they have not been designed to produce concrete, consequential outputs.
  • Many NGOs struggle to engage effectively in their communities. 

Driven by these insights, Kamal set out to help NGOs “adopt” innovative environmental ideas and implement them, thus turning social networking into a marketplace for NGOs.  ETP was the result, a system Kamal conceived and developed to catalyze environmental ideas. ETP, currently in a private beta release, is an open collaboration platform and network that helps transform ideas from individuals and organizations into real-world action and solutions. The ETP network even enables individuals to geo-report environmental problems, write articles, and network with individuals with a shared belief in a better planet.

ETP The Company, ETP the Network

As a company, ETP provides limited professional free guidance to social entrepreneurs for strategic planning, project planning, and feasibility analysis.

As a network, EarthTippingPoint.com will act as an “idea catalyst” system. The network comprises several distinct components, which collectively aim to fast-track the development of real, achievable solutions to environmental issues. Here are the parts that make up the ETP idea catalyst:

  • Open collaboration platform: The platform enables users to “pitch” an environmental idea, develop teams, set responsibilities and collaborate with the team members in a structured manner to transform the “idea” into a campaign, project, concept or invention.
  • Quality management system: Unseen by end-users, the quality management system weighs and assesses each team’s efficiency within an idea and the users’ effective utilization of the whole network. The system, in other words, is built to truly empower people and separate the signal from the noise.
  • Geo-Reporting system:  Users can highlight the exact geographic location of an environmental problem and link the responsible parties anonymously. 
  • Knowledge layers: This system is composed of different layers of geo-specific key information. They assemble information from WWF, Wildfinder, NASA and other open and free databases and integrate it in a certain manner to provide rapid information about the geographic area. 

By linking these systems strategically, ETP seeks to transform collective blogging and talking into collective practical environmental knowledge.  

Where They're At

Since introducing their project on NetSquared earlier this year, ETP has launched a pilot, beta, and a private version of the network. Based on gathered feedback and user needs, they are currently head-down on building a network with a new design, upgraded architecture, new features, and additional functionalities.

What do they need to succeed? As for so many of us, it comes down to resources. ETP is coming out of Kamal’s pocket right now, and they’re focused over the next few months on supporting their network development with sponsors to help secure the hefty costs of marketing and kickstarting the network and concept. Once it’s launched, though, they’re confident about the revenue model they’ve worked out and look forward to generating and supporting real-world environmental impact.

A Final Word from Kamal Merhebi

The ETP founder says: “We are fully confident that the system will provide the needed solutions for individuals and entities that would be interested in collaborating and promoting their ideas. By having a solid strategic plan, we managed to develop a truly unique and unconventional system.”

NetSquared 2011 Featured Projects Continues

We’ll be wrapping up the 2011 featured projects later this week. We’re excited to highlight NetSquared projects that have come through our networks over the past year. Stay tuned -- there's more to come!