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Bay Area repertory movie theaters are in trouble. (SF Chronicle, Audience Fading for Repertory Movie Theaters, Mick LaSalle, Monday, February 11, 2008). Programming that would have ensured a good turnout 20 years ago may not succeed in the era of NetFlix. Yet the true power of film is best appreciated onscreen and with other people.

There is an audience for repertory film that is not being reached. For the Art Deco Society of California website, I try to track films from the 1920s and '30s being shown in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our membership (700 paid; website/myspace/ecalendar unknown) will attend films of interest (and dress up for it!). It's hard to let our members know ahead of time because there is no single source for showing what's playing at independent theaters, let alone at film venues like the Mechanics Institute, Villa Montalvo, or the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum.

My dream is to create an online data repository for repertory film showings in the San Francisco Bay Area. Each organization showing films would upload their data to a common site that would then feed out streams (RSS, etc.) that could be easily picked up by sites like Yahoo movies. Films would be categorized by decade, genre (silent, precode, noir). Individuals could easily bring up what's playing in their area, or set up alerts for their special interests. The ADSC website could subscribe to an RSS feed for 1920s, '30s, and '40s. Other organizations might have similar needs.

Elders and the rapidly aging within the nation will receive the connection to resources and support that they need in a manner that enables them to Live Well independently within the community and supported by the community.

Live Well is a platform that will enable individuals and those who support them to meet their ongoing needs through a community network and that harnesses the potential of technology to integrate their support within the communities in which they live.

As care delivery is increasing pushed out of acute care facilities, as people are able to live longer with the assistance of chronic care treatments, and as the population ages, there is a need to improve access to social services for social services professionals, family/caregivers, and the individuals who need external support to Live Well in the community.

We aspire to promote people's independence and ability to live in the least restrictive environment possible. When adequate resources don't exist, people require "placement" into places where their needs can be met. A huge gap exists in the availability of place as well for people who do not require such restrictive measures, yet still need assistance to meet their daily needs. At this juncture, our country lacks the infrastructure capacity to "care" for people "in facilities," which necessitates developing means to support people who require assistance to Live Well in the community.

Live Well will provide a technology platform to fill the capacity gap in a democratized way while supporting our deepest aspirations for promoting liberty, equality, and the pursuit of happiness throughout all stages of life.

This is an area that is ripe to grow. There is a real need for harnessing technology to meet the needs of those already aged, most importantly for those entering into this group. While this is local in the sense of meeting needs peculiar to the way of western development, transience, and independence; we are exporting a trend of geographically mobile and displacement from traditional social structures into the developing world as the transaction cost of 'economic opportunity,' so development of this kind of platform will be universally applicable, it is already a problem in China.

The impression most New Orleanians have of Central City is that of a war zone inhabited by degenerates looking to prey upon innocent victims and each other. I-Witness Central City is a storymapping project that aids residents in reclaiming their history and their neighborhood through personal stories accessible online and via a cell-phone walking tour.

I-Witness Central City grew out of an earlier oral history program known as the I-10 Witness Project (www.i10witness.org). I-10 Witness emerged immediately following Hurricane Katrina as a means of giving those affected the opportunity to record their experiences and give their perspectives a place in the larger conversation about what happened here and how to move forward.

The stories that make up I-Witness Central City are organized not by topic but rather by location. There are two ways for listeners to access these stories. They can find them via video markers on a Google map or they can walk around Central City and look for our signs indicating that a story happened where they’re standing. A person can call up the number and hear the storyteller’s own voice setting the scene.

Some of the stories we’ve collected happened recently; some happened long ago. Kids growing up in Central City today might never know about the jazz funeral that the Free Southern Theatre held for itself in 1980 or who painted the murals of civil rights workers under the overpass. Others might hear a more personal tale of a resident finding love for the first time or a child confronting the neighborhood bully. Our project helps the neighborhood learn about itself and offers outsiders a whole new way of perceiving this much-maligned area of New Orleans.

Domestic violence is one of the most common causes of physical and emotional injury to women in the US. Emotional, financial, and educational barriers are often too great to shift away from domestic violence leaving thousands of victims trapped. Help resources are fragmented across states and have failed to achieve scale to overturn social conventions as well as provide proper resources. The R.I.S.E. (Reaching Information: Supporting Empowerment) Network will have the power to change that. It is the most ambitious effort in the U.S. to aggregate the right resources and technology to help men and women transform their lives and to initiate the process of healing from domestic violence.

R.I.S.E. is a multi-tiered online and offline community that provides safety, education, and donor-driven resources for abused victims, while also providing essential behavior modification, education and empowerment for families to usher in a new cultural understanding in our most challenged areas such as isolated immigrant communities. Taking full advantage of Web 2.0 and combining safe and secure device technology, R.I.S.E. will address the subtleties of anonymity while providing victims access to each other, experts, and community resources. Ex: Jane wants to leave this week. She has five minutes to check where a shelter is located in another city. She goes online to www.beckysfund.org, answers two questions about her location, need for shelter, and prints out the results at her local library. Then she clicks on the exit button which logs her out, erases the site from the computer's history, and takes her to a shopping site just as her abusive husband walks in the front door.

This project, the catalyst for change:

Every year in the US, millions of federal and state dollars allocated to low-income people and our communities are left on the table. Earned Income Tax Credits, Food Stamps and Enterprise Zone hiring tax credits are but a few examples. There are a myriad of reasons why the accessibility of these benefits is challenging, but what remains clear is that improving the takeup of these resources would release real dollars flowing into the pockets of low-income famillies, businesses and communities.

To address this complex problem, we need to engage and compel stakeholders from Community Leaders to policy makers at a local and state-wide level, from District Supervisors and other local officials, to Community-Based Organizations, and the Philanthropic Community. The ability to demonstrate graphically and in real time the dollar amount, type of benefit, and the neighboorhoods most affected will allow a transparency and richness of information which we have not yet been able to create.

As the project continues, we also see scope to add to the map other elements of public concern which characterize low-income neighboorhoods, i.e. costly check-cashing sites and pay-day loans, and other examples of money seeping out for expensive services.

Who we are:

SF Works is a catalyst for workforce success. We develop big-picture, innovative and practical solutions that benefit workers and their employers, delivered through our business and community network. Our programs respond to both employees aspirations for self-sufficiency and advancement and employers' demands for return on investment. Our goal is to create a vibrant, motivated and self-sufficient workforce in San Francisco.

Since 1995, Green Map System has engaged communities worldwide in charting a sustainable future. Now, we’re taking the next step by merging local knowledge and our freshly updated iconography with a Google Map mashup to create an open interactive Green Mapmaking website that will inclusively help people worldwide quickly share their own selection of sustainability sites, pathways and resources online. The resulting interactive Green Maps will be viewable from our own and many other websites, starting in mid-2008. With open commentary, green ratings, multimedia elements, 'impacts index', mobile access, on-site markers and more, everyone will be able to get involved.

My Green Map (working name) will give a powerful voice to thousands and ensure that an enormous diversity of successful sustainability activities and critical issues are shared with the broadest audience possible. It will merge the booming ‘local first’ and green development movements with social networking and interactive mapping. It will draw from a rich data source: thousands of green living, nature, social and cultural resources already charted on 335 published Green Maps, used by millions both near home and while traveling.

Our network of 450 locally-led map projects in 50 countries will be the first to add sites to My Green Map. Each of their mashups will be linked to profiles and the locally-designed Green Maps already viewable at GreenMap.org. Once technical and financial barriers to participation have been overcome, we intend to phase in public mapmaking and behavior change assessment, mobile formats, thematic worldviews, and more. Thus, the N2Y3 Mashup Challenge can play a key role in promoting inclusive participation in sustainable community development around the world.

The internet will osmose into the cell phone. Many internet transactions could easily be done on a regular cell phone using text messaging & other nifty mapping etc tools.

Freecycle.org: n. 1 a web community which enables people to give items away in their local community rather than to throw away these items of little or no monetary value. 2 a global gift economy which keeps hundreds of tons a day out of landfills.

Cell: n. 1 the most basic unit of life surrounded by a thin membrane which enables the absorption of nutrients. 2 a mobile phone requiring no cord or computer to connect with other members of ones community.

Osmosis: n. 1 the passage from one medium into another through a thin membrane such as the wall of a cell so as to equalize the concentration on both sides of the membrane. 2 an apparently effortless absorption of ideas.

The Freecycle Network current enables millions of members to effortlessly exchange items for free in 85 countries. 100% of all exchanges are limited to the medium referred to as the "internet." The concentration of activity is extremely high.

The other medium is the cell, or "mobile phone." This medium has a concentration of gifting of 0% and is an vast & undeveloped medium protected by a surprisingly thin membrane from the “internet.” Oddly enough, this medium is highly fluid and has become naturalized on every continent and is much more widespread than the so-called "internet" medium.

Nearly every humanoid carries such a medium on their person, not only in the more developed "Western" biome, but also in virtually every varying and developing micro-climate and biome on the planet. In fact 80% of all phones in Africa are “mobile phones.”

This project seeks to enable a penetration of the thin membrane which separates the cell from the highly concentrated medium which is this internet. With careful treatment and web/cellular engineering we believe that we can bring about a concentration shift to 50/50.

By enabling the cell to assume the functionality of the net, a viral expansion and dissipation is achieved of what may then become a truly “global gift economy.”

mashup catalysts: n. pl. 1 Coding which enables offering of items and their receipt directly via cell phone in interaction with Freecyle.org and other local cell phones. 2 Linkage to existing mapping functionality which then provides directional input on the cell phone to guide the humanoid to the local gift pickup location.