Patrick Byers, CEO and President of OutSsource Marketing talks to us about responsible marketing, passions, and what social benefit organizations are missing out on if they neglect social media.

If you have an event or conference that you think would be of interest to the NetSquared Community, email us at net2@techsoup.org, or post about it yourself on the NetSquared Community Blog (posting guidelines and instructions are available on our Share page).

Here are a few we thought might interest you:

Alexandra Samuel, longtime friend of NetSquared, talks to us about aligning the interests of businesses and NGOs, designing for participation, and how learning to have meaningful conversations online will save the world.

Jed Sundwall: What does Social Signal do?

Hi all. This is Ben Rigby from Mobile Voter. We’ve submitted the “Volunteer Now – by mobile phone” project to this year’s Mashup Challenge. I’m pretty blown away by all of the support that has come to this project already via the Net2 website – and we’re not even at the conference yet. We’ve already found coders, strategists, volunteer coordinators, and even a specialist in mobile phone volunteerism (would you have believed there was one out there?).

My colleague Eric Rardin just posted  a calculator on our Frogloop blog
that allows you to plug in your data and measure the value of an email
address. I thought everyone might be interested.

What makes us write a donation check, spread the word about a campaign, or show up for a meeting or protest? What makes us want to act for social change? Emotional connection. Passion for a cause.

For the past year, I have been writing for NetSquared about nonprofits and NGOs that are using the social web to cultivate donors, advocates and activists for their organization and their cause. I find that the campaigns I respond the most to are the ones with heart, whimsy and oftentimes, a story. Here are my picks for the Best Internet Marketing for a Cause 2006 (in alphabetical order). I hope you'll add your picks in the comments.

Blogging for Chickens by ProBlogger: Darren Rowse celebrated ProBlogger's second birthday by raising $1100 (AU), or about $830 US, to buy 110 pairs of chickens for impoverished families via Oxfam Australia. When Oxfam contacted Rowse they said that Blogging for Chickens was, "one of the more interesting fundraisers that they’ve seen."

Tara Hunt referred me to Gina Cardazone for help with our wiki ezine project. In particular, we need to collect story ideas (people & organizations doing great work in the Silicon Valley) and to recruit volunteers to help us tell the stories. Gina's advise was so useful, I asked her permission to post her note on our wiki - and here it is.

Anders Schneiderman from Web Services at the SEIU (Service Employees International Union) asked the question last week, "How Do You Place Your Bets in the Web 2.0 World?" on Tech Soup's Emerging Technologies Forum.

He writes:

Hello Net2 blog readers!

I'm back from my 2-week trip to Peru which was awesome.

Before I left, I did an interview for my Big Vision Podcast with Jonah Sachs, the Principal of Free Range Studios, an advertising and marketing firm with offices in Washington DC and Berkeley, California that specializes in non-profits and socially responsible businesses. They created the award-winning film, The Meatrix, about factory farming, and the hilarious film, Store Wars, about the importance of organic farming.

 Our wonderful podcast volunteers, Ryan MacArthur and David Collin, put up some more audio recordings from the NetSquared Conference on the NetSquared Podcast this weekend for your listening enjoyment:

New Web Tools and Their Revenue Models with panelists:

• Lee Davis
• Jim Fruchterman
• Clara Miller
  
• Vince Stehle (immoderator)

Human Rights and New Communication Technologies with panelists: