saidia.org

I was psyched to see my Casting a ballot for Africa blog post on the frontpage of the Netsquared.org website, and various blog postings about the Kabissa 2.0 proposal at WhiteAfrican.com, globalvoicesonline.org, and Meandering Passage - wow, thanks everyone for helping to get the word out. It would be stunning if plenty of projects oriented towards Africa and the global south were to be among the finalists for the Netsquared Innovation Award, which is being decided between now and Saturday, April 14th at noon. And I certainly hope Kabissa 2.0 is among them!

Netsquared.org is an initiative of Compumentor (the same folks who created Techsoup.org) and is creatively challenging advocacy groups and nonprofits to make good on the promises of the Internet for revolutionary change. According to http://www.netsquared.org/about:

Our mission is to spur responsible adoption of social web tools by social benefit organizations.There’s a whole new generation of online tools available – tools that make it easier than ever before to collaborate, share information and mobilize support. These tools include blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, podcasting, and more. Some people describe them as “Web 2.0″; we call them the social web, because their power comes from the relationships they enable.

Last year I attended their first conference, which was a rather loosely organized event exploring the power of Web 2.0 for social change. I was interviewed then, in fact, about Kabissa 2.0. This year promises to be more “action oriented” - especially given the grandiose competition going on at netssquared.org right now. Last month they issued a call for proposals for innovative Web 2.0 for social change projects, and this week the Netsquared community is voting on the amazing 150 proposals submitted. The top 20 will be represented at the conference - all expenses paid - and duke it out for the top prize for the Netsquared Innovation Award. Of those even the losers are no doubt going to get plenty of attention.

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