I thought I'd post my responses to the NetSquared request for answers to 4 questions for a printable voter guide they are putting together next week.

This is for my project at: http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/your-mapper

1. In 200 characters or less, what’s your Mashup Challenge elevator pitch?

Last night, N2Y2 Featured Project, TakingITGlobal, received the Microsoft Education Award at the Tech Museum Awards in San Jose, CA. The Canadian-based organization is an online community that connects youth to find inspiration, access information, get involved, and take action in their local and global communities.

They were one of five recipients of $50,000 cash prizes. The other winners were:

"I think one of the most important things that we are hoping to do, and we hope that people will help us with, is just talking about the message of open video, talking to people about why it's so important that the way videos are distributed online be open, and where the future of media is headed. Do we want it to be something that has a lot of gatekeepers? Do we want more proprietary systems, more closed off systems? Or do we want to make something that's truly open, truly accessible?"

Nicholas Reville is the Co-founder and Executive Director of the Participatory Culture Foundation, the creators of the Miro Internet TV Platform. Miro was a Featured Project at the NetSquared Conference in May 2007, and the Second Place Winner of the NetSquared Innovator Award.

You can hear an audio interview with Nicholas on the NetSquared Podcast, and a transcript of the interview is posted below.

You can also listen to Miro's 5-minute pitch at the Conference.

Nicholas Reville: My name is Nicholas Reville. I'm one of the founders and the Executive Director of the Participatory Culture Foundation, and we make Miro, which is a desktop application for watching Internet TV, and playing and organizing videos. We're set up as a nonprofit because we think that open video online is crucially important to the future of our media.

Television has been, historically, a very non-democratic medium, something that's been controlled by a small number of people. It's really a one-way broadcast. As that moves online, we have a chance to change that, and make it something that's open to anybody. There are a lot of companies right now that are trying to put video online in a very closed, proprietary way. We're trying to build something open, something that works like the Internet itself, specifically for video, and that's what Miro is all about.

"I think as of 2005, the majority of new Internet users every month, people who have never used the Internet before, no longer speak English as a first language. So there's a huge need for non-English content. We now have our site in 12 languages, and we're working on about 15 others to really meet that demand for further bringing together people with a diversity of language skills."

Michael Furdyk of TakingITGlobal is the 14th interview in our series of chats with the 21 Featured Projects from the 2nd NetSquared Conference (N2Y2).

You can hear an audio recording of the interview on the NetSquared Podcast and hear TakingITGlobal's 5-minute pitch at the Conference, here.

Michael Furdyk: I'm Michael Furdyk, the Director of Technology and Co-founder of TakingITGlobal. We are one of the first social networks for social good and social change focused specifically on engaging young people in important global and social issues and trying to get them to network across cultures and across languages to make a positive difference in their communities, in their countries, and in the world using technology.

Last month I interviewed Siegfried Woldhek, the founder and CEO of NABUUR for the NetSquared Podcast. NABUUR was one of the Featured Projects at the NetSquared Conference in May 2007. You can read a transcript of the interview below, and hear NABUUR's 5-minute pitch at the Conference here.

Siegfried Woldhek: Hi, I'm Siegfried Woldhek, and I'm the founder and CEO of NABUUR. NABUUR is an old Dutch word that means "neighbor." And it's chosen, that name, because we can now act as neighbors in the global village and help each other out, as neighbors do if they live together in a physical place.

NABUUR makes it possible for villages all around the world to get direct help from people that live elsewhere, far away or nearby, to solve local problems through the Internet. And the strange thing is, the wonderful thing is, that it actually works.

Today's interview is with Jennifer Sly, the Founder of YouthAssets. YouthAssets was one of the 21 Featured Projects at the NetSquared Conference in May 2007.

You can hear the audio recording of the interview on the NetSquared Podcast. A recording of YouthAssets' 5-minute pitch at the Conference is also available.

Jennifer Sly: Hello, my name is Jennifer Sly, and I'm the Founder of YouthAssets, a new organization dedicated to connect orphans and other vulnerable youth in southern Africa with the resources and support that they need. YouthAssets engages youth in the international development process in southern Africa by using interactive content accessible by mobile technology. Youth can then receive the most relevant information when they need it.

Congratulations to N2Y2 Featured Project, MAPLight.org for being chosen as one of the five World Summit Award winners in the category of E-Government. The other four winners were:

ATM EXPRESS GOVERNMENT - Mexico
citizensinformation.ie - Ireland
citizen.dk - Denmark
Lower House of German Parliament - Germany

It has been almost 8 weeks since the NetSquared Conference when 21 Featured Projects presented their ideas to philanthropists, developers, venture capitalists, and other nonprofit techies and web innovators. What are they up to now?

• What projects are the most likely to take off and succeed?
• What projects will achieve the greatest impact?
• What projects will be best leveraged by the social change community?

These were the three criteria N2Y2 Participants were asked to use when choosing which of the 21 Featured Projects should receive the $25,000 First Prize, $15,000 Second Prize and $10,000 Third Prize from the Technology Innovation Fund. The remaining $50,000, of the $100,000 Fund, was divided among the remaining 18 Featured Projects in prizes of $2,777 each.

Each Conference participant got three voting chips to cast for either their top three projects, or they could toss all three of their chips towards one project. When the votes were cast, the Featured Projects with the most chips were:

First Prize: MAPLight.org: A Light On Money and Politics
Elevator Pitch: "MAPLight.org illuminates the connection between money and politics. We connect campaign contributions and votes for U.S. Congress, providing groundbreaking transparency so that bloggers, journalists, and citizens can hold legislators accountable."

Second Prize: Miro, Open Source, Open Standards Video
Elevator Pitch: "We are to Google, AOL and YouTube what public television is to the big networks. We are a nonprofit, fully open source and open standards, dedicated to creating the next Firefox of web video."

Third Prize: The Freecycle Network
Elevator Pitch: "By empowering globally local social networking, we have created a gift economy/community. The magic: it’s easier to give something away than throw it away & keeps it out of landfills; a cyber-curbside; a digital segue from commodity to community."

You can hear MAPLight.org, Miro and The Freecycle Network's introductory presentations from the Conference, as well as the other Featured Projects' introductory presentations, on the NetSquared Podcast.

Thank you Britt for your post.

Just as a follow up, please help me spread the word about letting any non profit organization use the cartoon and add their logo. More information here.

And here is an example of what it can look like with one of the 21 projects logo.