The N2Y3 2008 Mashup Challenge featured 21 teams competing for funding for initiatives ranging from saving endangered languages to ending genocide. On the first day of the conference each team was permitted two minutes to describe their projects, many of which focused on themes like government transparency and corporate accountability, and all of which rely very heavily on websites and social networking platforms. Mapping proved to be a very popular tool for organizing information.
Attendees were only allowed to vote for three projects, but all had their merits. Following are photos of all 21 teams and brief descriptions of the projects:
Volunteer Now! By Mobile Phone: Jet setters that never get around to volunteering can do it with their cell phones whenever they have free time. For example, if you have an hour on your hands, Volunteer Now! will refer you to a nearby soup kitchen.
OneWorld Connect: Communication media of, by and for the people, designed to give marginalized communities a voice.
My Green Map: Sharing Your Sustainable Worldview: Provides information about local sustainable resources for residents and visitors interested in green living.
MoveSmart.org: Encourages housing seekers to move to neighborhoods with opportunity, thus reducing racial, ethnic, and economic residential segregation.
Rosetta Project – Minority Languages in Google Earth: Seeks to stop the extinction of endangered languages by creating a geographically-focused database and Google Earth layers that interface with this data.
Ask Your Lawmaker: Connecting Local Communities To Their Lawmakers: The organization seeks to ask questions on behalf of American citizens who would not otherwise be able to track members of Congress down.
SquarePeg – Change Is Social: Networking and organizational tool for activists.
CorpWatch – Government Data on Corporations: Corporate accountability-focused database that seeks to expose the information corporations obfuscate.
Ushahidi: Mapping Reports of Post-Election Violence in Kenya: Documents and maps incidents of violence and peace in African conflict regions.
A Mashup of 29+ Social Action Platforms: A list and explanation of social action platforms that enables users to find the most relevant opportunities.
Anti-Genocide Action Tracker: Alerts activists to pending anti-genocide legislation so that they can pressure their state governments and elected representatives into passing this legislation
City of New Orleans: A Mashup for Citizen Monitoring of the Recovery: Organizes and maps the digital photo records of the recovery of the city.
AssetMap.org/Uganda: Aggregates and maps needs and resources in Northern Uganda for the benefit of its civil society.
Map This! Tool that connects people to resources at a neighborhood level.
Metavid: Community Video Archive Project: Digitizes daily government proceedings so that participants can search who said what when.
Freecycle.org: A "cyber curbside" that allows people to give old items away for free in 85 countries with the use of their cell phones.
KnowMore.org: Firefox extension that alerts consumers of the corporate abuses of the company, brand or product website they are visiting.
OpenCongress.org: A resource that allows the public to track any bill, issue or member of Congress, making Congress more intelligible and transparent.
Your Mapper: Enables local public data collection on a global scale through the use of an interactive map. The organization shares revenue with those loading the data.
Maplight.org: A map of campaign contributions that enables users to track which issues interest groups care about.
Greener One: Provides eco-ratings of (electronic and household) products for environmentally conscious consumers.
Watch videos of the 21 Net2 Mashup Challenge featured projects.