The European Congress of Culture that just ended in Wroclaw, Poland, has been one of the most important European events during this year’s Polish presidency in the EU. Run with impetus, packed with intellectual and artistic personalities, the congress made an attempt to highlight Europe's most important art initiatives. What about this cultural project could be interesting in the context of the NetSquared Community?

The District-by-District Organizing Tool is officially in the running for the Change the Web competition. I'm cutting it a bit close since I'm knee-deep in bioinformatics studying for finals coming up in a week.

Looking forward to seeing what other entries are submitted in the next 24 hours. 

Sunlight Labs has announced its newest challenge: Apps for America!  Prizes go to developers who can use data from Sunlight and our partners that makes Congress more accountable, interactive and transparent.  Learn more and submit your idea.

TechSoup's Senior Manager of Online Community Development, Susan Tenby, testified today before the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Energy and Commerce's Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. The hearing's topic was, “Online Virtual Worlds: Applications and Avatars in a User-Generated Medium." Tenby is the Founder of TechSoup's Nonprofit Commons, a virtual community for nonprofits in Second Life.

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The intersection of technology and capitalism is the primary reason that we will continue have to work uphill to protect open access and free speech no matter what technology we are talking about. Indeed, we must remain vigilant. It is not the companies who created a new set of policies (1996 Telecom Act) that threatens access and open source -- it is CONGRESS. And we have to fight first against the undue influence telecomm companies have over Congress through CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS. What do we have in response? PEOPLE POWER. So sure, we need though leaders, but we need to MOBILIZE PEOPLE POWER in defense of our consitutional rights in the "information age".

Rick Cohen is the Membership and Communications Associate for the National Council of Nonprofit Associations (NCNA) and is in charge of web strategy for the Nonprofit Congress. The Congress is an effort to build a grass-roots directed and unified front for the non profit sector to gain strength on the national scale. It is a new two year initiative of NCNA and the DC Central Kitchen.

Rick and I discussed the aims of the Nonprofit Congress, open source software and where the organizing cultures of both intersect.