Civic Agora is an open online platform, in the early stages of development, where people will be able to gather to discuss, deliberate upon and present solutions to issues that they consider important. The inspiration for the platform is the 'agora' or marketplace in ancient Greece where citizens would gather to debate a broad range of subjects, such as politics, science or ethics.

Here at Green Map System, we're tickled pink to be among the 21 featured projects for N2Y3! Thanks much to all who voted for us and are already connecting to share ideas, resources and advice! This project is getting better, day by day, with your involvement.

Our work on this project really began in Fall 2007. Among other things, we floated a few different names out to the Green Map network. Open Green Map was their top choice, but we decided to test out a few other options, including My Green Map, as working names. As we used the different names, we watched the reactions.

Are your community’s articles, blogs, and discussions left shivering in a dark and quiet echo chamber? Do relevant reach, attraction, engagement, interactivity, and participation elude your organization’s site?

Today, January 23rd, 2008, Seth Godin (Search Engine Strategies, Search Engine Watch, Clickz Network, & BuzzLogic) webcast the core message from his new book, “Meatball Sundae”. This haunting & timely theme speaks to a challenge which many of us in non-profit organizations and non-governmental entities struggle with: how (& where) do we better communicate with those whom we serve as well as those on whom we depend, and through doing so, provide a better service?

Location

Location

Common Project Visions:

Collaboratively identify common problems and common solutions

A number of project proposals share a common vision: creating a space where our respective constituencies can share common problems and collaboratively identify common solutions.

I also see that our projects share a common problem = Engaging user participation!

I bet we can help each other overcome our common obstacles to fulfilling our common vision.

Common Project Obstacle:

We've had a couple of posts recently from folks asking the NetSquared community for help that I wanted to point to.

In answer to the first of our Four Questions, "What's * Really * New on the Web?", Paul Lamb of the Nonprofits of the Future blog wants your opinion about what a technologically empowered nonprofit will look like 5-10 years down the road.  You can get more information and post comments on his blog, or email him at pauljlamb@gmail.com.

Last night on the community blog, Julius Huijnk, a 4th year student in the EMMA program at the HKU in the Netherlands, wrote a post asking for feedback and help building a decentralized charity web site. You can get more information at his blog, Making The Site.