Hi Net2, Below is the official pitch for A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms. It just went up on my blog, About Micro-Philanthropy. A few of the mashup creators have sent me email votes of confidence. Thanks for your support. My next post will be a reprint of the ballot I plan to cast. -Peter

Dear friend,

I am asking for your support in an online contest called the NetSquared Mashup Challenge.

Below, you will find simple instructions on how you can vote for my contest submission. Your support will help me attend a conference in San Jose at the end of May and take my work in micro-philanthropy to the next level.

It will take 20 minutes at the most to complete this request.

I have spent the last 18 months working independently on my blog, About Micro-Philanthropy and building Social Actions.

Without financial support, I have devoted my time and computer skills to advancing the notion that technology, used in the right way, can help people create, identify, and support grassroots solutions to urgent social problems.

I want to continue this work. But to do so, I need to find funders, foundations, and collaborators in the nonprofit technology sector who are interested in my mission. Enter an online contest called the NetSquared Mashup Challenge.

About the NetSquared Mashup Challenge

In early January, NetSquared put out a call for the most innovative mashups for social change. A mashup is an online tool that combines multiple data sources with some kind of visualization or search function. To determine which contest submissions are the most innovative, the staff at NetSquared decided to “crowd-source” the winners. Anyone and everyone can vote for their favorite mashup proposals.

The polls opened on Monday at 8am. And they will be closing on Friday at 5pm PST.

The 20 mashup proposals with the most votes will attend the annual NetSquared Conference in San Jose, May 27 & 28, 2008. During the conference, the creators of the 20 most popular mashups will have a chance to pitch their projects to funders, foundations, and fellow nonprofit tech professionals. I hope to be among the people promoting their mashups at the conference.

About My Contest Submission

I have submitted a project called “A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms.” My mashup combines the latest peer-to-peer social change campaigns from a range of social action platforms (Change.org, FirstGiving, GiveMeaning, Kiva, and others). The dataset as a whole is made available through a search engine and the Google Maps API.

A colleague and I built the initial version last week. You can test drive it here.

To read the full description of my project, visit “A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms.”

In brief:

"The Social Actions mashup will free peer-to-peer social change campaigns from the social action platforms on which they were created, resulting in the unrestricted flow of active campaigns from the people who created them to the people who are most likely to get involved.

"The Social Actions mashup will popularize an open-standard for indexing peer-to-peer social change campaigns using the hListing micro-format, or something similar, and will provide stunning examples of how this semantic data once aggregated can be mapped visually according location, area of interest, or active participation."

I feel strongly that these innovations will move the field of peer-to-peer social change in the right direction. The goal is to simplify the process in finding relevant campaigns for end users of social action platforms.

At this point, I need votes in order to secure a spot among the top 20 mashups for social change. Please take just 20 minutes to vote for “A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms.” Thank you in advance for your support.

Simple Instructions for Casting Your Ballot

1) Create a free user account at NetSquared

2) Add "A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms" to your ballot (You must be logged-in to do this; at the top of my proposal page, click "Add Project to Ballot")

3) Add four other mashups to your ballot

4) Review your ballot (Make sure "A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms" is listed)

5) At the bottom of your ballot, click the "Cast Ballot" button

Note: The ballot submission process is a little bit confusing. If you get lost in the process, email me.

Thank you so much for your support!

After you have cast your ballot, please email me. This is the only way for me to know when to send a thank you note.

Thank you so much! I’ll let you know how it turns out.

All the best,

Peter

PS -- If you have a blog, I’d appreciate any link love you can share. Email me a link to your blog post, and I'll be sure to post a comment.