Reaction Paper 10 – TechSoup and the NetSquared Conference

Today I spoke with Daniel Ben-Horin, Executive Director of CompuMentor. CompuMentor has been operating for the last 21 years, providing technical support, expertise, and mentorship to nonprofit organization. They launched the site TechSoup, and are also hosts of the Net Squared Conference. The next NetSquared Conference is to take place on May 27^th in New York, hosted by Cisco. Their mission is to spur responsible adoption of social web tools by social benefit organizations. They are breaking down barriers of knowledge and access to technology tools for nonprofit organizations. During the NetSquared Conference last year, they awarded seed funding to 21 projects through the Mashup Challenge, an initiative designed to provide deeper insight into the social issues affecting communities, by the use of web-based mash-ups. A list of the winning projects are listed here. One thing that they all share in common is that they are very much community based. A majority of the mash-ups rely on Google Maps, as is the case with most mash-ups out there. (Google Maps is the leading source of mash-ups by about 10 times the next competitor).

One of the more remarkable projects to come out of Net Squared Conference is Maplight.org. MAPLight.org brings together campaign contributions and how legislators vote, providing an unprecedented window into the connections between money and politics. They currently cover the California Legislature and U.S. Congress. In my mind, this project is so remarkable because it taps into the greatest advantage to the socially conscious web-based experience – transparency. Transparency is the key to the experience. That is what attracted me to Kiva.org as well, is that it provides a level of transparency that wasn’t easy to accomplish prior to the web. When you make a donation online, you are able to track your payment, you are able to see how much money is being raised against the project goals, and you are able to hold the Microfinance institutions accountable who are handling the loans. Maplight takes this to a new level, by being able to effectively track the flow of money, and holding legislators accountable who are handling that money. It is an unprecedented phenomenon. Other added benefits include the added knowledge that you gain in the process that was previously unavailable. Also, there is again the sense of community-driven action, and a higher level of involvement in a process.

As Daniel Ben-Horin explained, there’s a whole new generation of online tools available – tools that make it easier than ever before to collaborate, share information and mobilize support. These tools include blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, podcasting, and more. What most people are calling “Web 2.0”; he calls the social web. The power of the social web is the emphasis on interactivity, user-generated content (UGC), and the community aspect. Although the web is world wide, its power comes from the relationships that it enables. These relationships can transcend locations and boundaries.

There are other projects that have come out of Net Squared that are worth noting. Another Los Angeles based project is Healthy City, an initiative of the community-based nonprofit The Advancement Project. Health City is another Google Map mash-up that provides a layout of the county of Los Angeles, and lists any and all service providers within a certain zip code, from health clinics, police stations, schools, service providers, and any other information you want to access for that neighborhood. That is a project that can service any members of the Los Angeles community, and it will eventually spread to include communities across the country. I will be sure to keep an eye on what happens in the next Net Squared conference.