The Mashup to End All Mashups

Well, I doubt that this will end the mashup trend going on out in the interwebs, but I thought folks might be interested in seeing this…

NetSquared (based in the U.S.) has launched their newest summer contest, the N2Y3 (that’s NetSquared Year Three) Mashup Challenge. You can see the 100+ projects that have been submitted here. One of mySociety’s projects, PledgeBank, is featured in one of the submissions: Social Actions. OK, the name isn’t super-sexy. But the idea is. Peter Deitz is developing a way to lead any given user (an individual or an organization) through the process of selecting a social action platform. Do you want to raise money? Do you need to integrate with a specific CRM? Do you need an online donation processing tool? Do you need a widget for your site? This mashup with combine 29+ (the list keeps growing) “action” tools (including PledgeBank) in that wizard, helping the average Joe or Jane figure out which tool would work best for them.

Of course, in order to move forward in the competition for mentoring and money, Peter needs your vote. To vote for this mashup (and at least four more — NetSquared is smarter than to just let everyone vote for one), just create a free account on the site and add at least five projects to your ballot. There are some really cool ones out there, so browse around a bit. The polls opened on Monday at 8am PST, and they will be closing on Friday at 5pm PST. The 20 mashup proposals with the most votes will attend the annual NetSquared Conference in San Jose, May 27 & 28, 2008. During the conference, the mashup creators will have a chance to pitch their projects to funders, foundations, and fellow nonprofit tech professionals.

As they say in Chicago, vote early and vote often!

3 Comments

  1. Hi Heather, Thanks for blogging about the Social Actions mashup project. We can definitely use votes from the U.K. and elsewhere. Our initiative is one of the more grassroots among the mashups. We don’t have a huge mailing list to bug for votes. The blogosphere is going to have to rise to the challenge for Social Actions to make it to the Net2 conference.

    By the way, thanks to PledgeBank our google map is displaying campaigns in Europe and elsewhere. Your social action platform is one of the few that clearly identifies location.

    Please have a look:
    mashup.socialactions .com/map

    And, don’t forget to vote. The voting process is a little tricky. If anyone gets confused, please shoot me an email: peterdeitz@gmail.com

    Thanks in advance for your support.

  2. If you are interested in UK projects, please also check out UK based Project Bija a mashup designed to Seed Sustainable Development. If you like it please vote for us!

    Sustainable initiatives from PledgeBank could also be fed into Project Bija – so this is not just spam!!

    Thanks for reading.

  3. Nathaniel Whittemore

    Hi Heather,
    I saw that you were writing about the Netsquared Mashup challenge and I wanted to share a little bit about our Mashup Challenge entry: Assetmap.org/uganda.

    The question behind the project is this: with peace on the horizon after 20 years of war in northern Uganda, and the big NGOs soon heading off to other war zones, who is going to support community organizations and northern Ugandan civil society as it transitions to peace time?
    By mapping information about ongoing community-led philanthropic partnerships in northern Uganda, assetmap.org/uganda helps American citizens aggregate their resources to support post-conflict transformation.
    We hope to facilitate collaboration among American donors and volunteers by providing a digital tool that:
    •maps project locations so you know who’s working where
    •tags information about the specific issues projects and organizations seek to address
    •links tagged and mapped projects to the facebook and LinkedIn profiles of participating donors or volunteers
    If you’re interested in supporting us, please visit and vote for us on netsquared.

    Thanks!
    Nathaniel Whittemore
    Director, Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement
    http://www.mycge.org
    globalengagement at gmail