NetSquared enables social benefit organizations to leverage the tools of the social web.
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Building community in your area? Check out the newly-launched Community Organizers Handbook! Everything you need to start and grow a NetSquared Local group or any other community-powered program.
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NetSquared Local events provide a chance to connect locally with all those interested in the intersection of social technologies and social change. There are new groups forming every week: Join in!
net2 updates
Building community in your area? Check out the newly-launched Community Organizers Handbook! Everything you need to start and grow a NetSquared Local group or any other community-powered program.
Hooze & Wagn: Organically Grown Public Data on Products and Companies
Challenges Entered:
Hooze.org and its Wagn underbelly are for collaboratively gathering and broadcasting convenient, trustworthy public data about products and companies. With wiki spirit and database power, Hooze gives citizens a new economic voice.
Our goal is to make it practical and rewarding to align money and values.
Today, it's a huge challenge. Who can keep track of the human rights records of millions of companies? Or the fossil fuel spent on billions of products? So incredibly much to know, and yet we're usually forced to rely on (1) sales pitches and (2) our memories.
Hooze was started by social-minded geeks whose heads couldn't hold enough info to make ethical choices.
That's a data problem.
We believe we as citizens should have access to information about a product's impacts on the things we care about when we're shopping. We believe it should be simple to learn about companies' practices before we support them. Cellphones that scan barcodes, widgets on websites, browser add-ons, in-store displays, social impact receipts. responsible investing, institutional purchasing, screening sponsors and suppliers... it all hinges on credible, meaningful data.
Hooze.org is for gathering and sharing that data. We're about helping individuals and organizations present information about products and companies in a way that makes it easy to find, filter, and use. We believe this information should be public, and must be ubiquitous if we are to build a sustainable economy. To realize this vision, we need to be able to create and arrange information collaboratively, as on wikis, and then retrieve it precisely, as with databases. So we built Wagn.
Wagn powers Hooze by letting communities of users organize information on-the-fly. Its innovative design infuses wikis with database power, giving it great flexibility. Conceived a year ago, the open-source tool is already used for knowledge management, meeting records, documentation, personal information management, and, of course, building a sustainable economy ;)
WHAT WE NEED:
We need a champion: someone focusing the bulk of his/her energy on Hooze.org. A great tool is not enough for a great website -- it takes a community. We want to fund a full-time position to nurture Hooze community so that we can begin promoting the site in earnest.
We need collaborators. Hooze is intended to help other organizations to deliver their messages to buyers when they're buying, investors when they're investing, and merchants when they're... merching. Help us connect to them!
We need to keep developing. We've got a wonderful software team, but we need to fund it and grow it. Ruby-on-rails developers welcome.
OK name runner up! I need this site (Hooze&Wagn) NOW! It is about time someone "...adding a clear economic push for transparency." Yes I want to know the human rights record of the company I buy my shirts from -- given this info I can and will choose to buy from an ethical company --so will others -- and you guess what ethical companies will flourish --market forces for good, for a change! There that was easy! Transparency is the new BLACK!
You have my support --I hope you will consider a vote for buttons of hope!
On my list as well, and on the list of suggested projects Grassroots.org will be sending out in our mailings (check out the Grassroots.org Nonprofit Toolbox).
Submitted by davidjames on April 9, 2007 - 1:03pm.
After considering all of the proposals, I was pleased to put it on my list of most innovative NetSquared projects. It will help us (everyone!) align our spending with our values.
You got my vote and a place in my blog!
michael gibbons buttons of hope
You are the inspiration for "Transparency is the new black!"
In Transparency is the new black, I wrote...
OK name runner up! I need this site (Hooze&Wagn) NOW! It is about time someone "...adding a clear economic push for transparency." Yes I want to know the human rights record of the company I buy my shirts from -- given this info I can and will choose to buy from an ethical company --so will others -- and you guess what ethical companies will flourish --market forces for good, for a change! There that was easy! Transparency is the new BLACK!
You have my support --I hope you will consider a vote for buttons of hope!
Hooze and co.
I have blogged about Hooze and WagN at wrythings.
Best of luck!
Cool
On my list as well, and on the list of suggested projects Grassroots.org will be sending out in our mailings (check out the Grassroots.org Nonprofit Toolbox).
Good luck with it!
Dave.
Innovative and meaningul
After considering all of the proposals, I was pleased to put it on my list of most innovative NetSquared projects. It will help us (everyone!) align our spending with our values.
This is one of my top 7
This is one of my top 7 proposals. Good luck!