Note: My post to Social Actions' Google group, summing up the N2Y3 experience. Still buzzing from having been a part of such a fantastic event!

Hi all,

Finally sharing some thoughts on the NetSquared Conference which (hard to believe!) wrapped up just about a month ago.

First, some links:

NetSquared website: http://www.netsquared.org/
NetSquared Challenge 2008 website: http://www.netsquared.org/conference
Featured Projects: http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/n2y3_featured_proj...
Blog: http://www.netsquared.org/Blog
Photos on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=n2y3

The conference (known as N2Y3) brought together about 400 people representing foundations, social media, TechSoup/CompuMentor/Cisco reps, bloggers and vloggers, and the 21 finalist projects.

In a word, I found N2Y3 to be, well, awesome. Fabulously organized – not glitch-free, but really, really well done – and the reason for the conference itself, to support “mashups designed to provide deeper insight into the social issues affecting communities around the globe,” was compelling and worthwhile and attracted a fantastic group of inspiring people and projects. Even if I weren’t an optimist by nature, the conference would still have been incredibly optimism-generating. It just feels good to know that projects like
Ushahidi.com, KnowMore.org, GreenMap.org, and YourMapper.com are out there, coming together and garnering support from this growing community of resources.

Unlike the Stockholm Challenge of the week before, N2Y3 was an active competition, so while the atmosphere was still friendly and low-key there was definitely a different purpose for describing Social Actions as clearly and concisely as possible, making sure the concept was understood, and soliciting constructive feedback about any perceived shortcomings. Like the 2-minute video Peter posted on the blog, many opportunities to talk about Social Actions were of the super-quick elevator-pitch variety. My sense in engaging with people at that level of conversation was that they either got what Social Actions was about and were instantly enthusiastic (“That doesn’t exist already? How great you’re doing that!”) or they already knew about Peter and Social Actions and wanted to get involved or stay informed as the project moved forward.

Longer conversations afforded great opportunities to talk about why we were all commited to supporting social change – lots of overlapping personal and professional missions – and how we thought that support should be delivered – as many different methods for engaging in this work as there were people and organizations represented. My favorite conversation was the most challenging one, when Peter, Phil Klein, and I got grilled for over an hour by Jon Peizer and Gavin Clabaugh. Jon used to be with the Soros Foundation and is now with Internaut Consulting; Gavin is with the C.S. Mott Foundation. Their questions about Social Actions’ organizational intentions really helped us think through our desire to create an organization that reflects our projects’ inclusivity and reflexivity, and the importance of defining that in terms that potential collaborators will understand and feel comfortable with.

As with in Stockholm, we generated a long list of people and groups to partner with as participating platforms, distributors, or developers. So the conference was a huge success for Social Actions for that alone, but of course winning two prizes was pretty great, too. :)

So N2Y3 was just a fantastic experience all around and I’m very grateful to have been there. Thank you, Peter, for making that possible, and thank you, Fre, for encouraging the application – never underestimate the power of inspiration!

Christine