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The February meeting of the 501 Tech Club in Portland happened recently. We piggy-backed with another area event to share the presenter and it was SO much fun! We shared space, discussion, and goods at the Lucky Lab with representatives from HumaniNet, Personal Telco Project, and One Laptop Per Child News.
I have heard of, but never met with, HumaniNet and am happy to have had the opportunity. HumaniNet is an organization "founded in 2002 by a group of volunteers in the United States who recognized the acute need for technology assistance to humanitarian organizations. Since then, HumaniNet has grown to become a cooperative network of over 100 field organizations, several supporting technology businesses, and a group of expert volunteers who help with research and analysis, finding the best practices, and sharing field results in global information and communication technologies, or ICT." If you are an organization working in the field of emergency response, remote field/medic crews, or other widely dispersed teams, you should really talk with the great folks at HumaniNet about their work and ideas! One project that Executive Director Gregg Swanson shared with us, is the development of a system to connect folks in the field with breaking news and information via the internet and internet capable tools. Great work they are doing!
Something that I brought up at the gathering and want to share with you all as well is that Net Squared's Mashup Challenge deadline is just a few weeks away! N2 is awarding a share of $100,000 in prize money, and a trip to the NetSquared Conference, to the top 20 winners of the NetSquared Mashup Challenge. You don't need to have tech expertise to submit a project to the Challenge, just an idea for a change you want to make that could be facilitated by a mashup.
You can see the ideas submitted so far on their site and even provide feedback on the proposals to help refine the projects, changes can be made up to the deadline! Do you have an idea for information that would help tell a story for your organization, community, constituents, or funders? Why not submit that idea to the Mashup Challenge and make the idea into a real product! Some examples of great mashups include: Maplight.org, ChicagoCrimes.org, ActiveTrails, and the Tunisian Prison Map.
If you have questions, ideas, comments, or anything else about the 501 Tech Club meetings, HumaniNet, or Net Squared's Mashup Challenge, I'd love to hear it!
