Starting this Friday, the NetSquared team will be at the South By Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas. The SXSWi conference is an opportunity for online media experts to get together for in-person networking and learning. If you're going to be there, we'd love for you to get in touch. Here's what we'll be up to:

Civic Agora is an open online platform, in the early stages of development, where people will be able to gather to discuss, deliberate upon and present solutions to issues that they consider important. The inspiration for the platform is the 'agora' or marketplace in ancient Greece where citizens would gather to debate a broad range of subjects, such as politics, science or ethics.

The John S. and James L.

The 3rd Digital Media and Learning Competition, from the MacArthur Foundation, is now accepting applications. In partnering with the White House, National Lab Day, and videogame makers Sony and EA, the Digital media and Learning Competitions has prizes up to $200,000 and is open to all kinds of innovative projects (including games) that make use of digital media for education and social change. Submissions close January 22, 2010.

Learn more and apply today!

There's just a couple weeks left to submit your project to the Vodafone Americas Foundation's second annual Vodafone Wireless Innovation Project, a competition to identify and reward the most promising advances in wireless related technologies, which can be used to solve critical problems around the globe. Submissions close February 1, 2010, with the final winners announced on April 19, 2010 at the annual Global Philanthropy Forum in Redwood City, CA, one of the Wireless Innovation Project's nonprofit partners.

Here at NetSquared we are proud, honored, and in awe every day of the very special global community made up of local groups and their networks, the ties between local groups around the world, and the project teams from all over the globe focused on innovations that help us make the world a better place.  Reflecting on the Community and the work being done in every corner of the world, we've tried to articulate some of the aspects that make the NetSquared Community so unique and also so powerful.

In recent days, Causes has left MySpace and IdeaBlob has shutdown. To some, these events were unimportant. In reaction to the Causes announcement, Economist bureau chief Matthew Bishop tweeted “Who knew it was on MySpace?” to which New York Times reporter Stephanie Strom tweeted back “No kidding.”  But to many people active in online social action communities, these events had deeper meaning.

Visit the Tactical Philanthropy blog to read today's guest post from Amy Sample Ward, NetSquared’s Global Community Development Manager.

Today, over 800 student activists converged on Capitol Hill for the largest lobby day to prevent genocide in history. 

The Vodafone Americas Foundation is accepting applications for the second annual Vodafone Wireless Innovation Project, a competition to identify and reward the most promising advances in wireless related technologies, which can be used to solve critical problems around the globe. Proposals will be accepted through February 1, 2010, with the final winners announced on April 19, 2010 at the annual Global Philanthropy Forum in Redwood City, CA.