NetSquared's Mashup Challenge to Developers and Non-Profits

For the past two months, NetSquared has been planning a rewarding challenge for developers, managers, and non-profit organizations to collaborate on how they combine information sources to improve the performance of NPO service delivery, operations, communications, logistics, research and/or development.

I know (from my own personal experience as a project champion and business mentor for one of the conference projects last year) that all participants grow and benefit from their collaboration in this competition. NetSquared has asked me to develop awareness, interest, participation, and follow-through by university students, academics, and alumni in the creation and operation of project teams. Imagine the possibilities and think about how you might work with NetSquared in this program. For additional information, please see our challenge announcement, guidelines, and submission form.

Timeline

1. Teams of NPOs, developers, managers, and other specialists are forming now to submit their applications prior to the March 14, 2008 deadline. As there may be a large number of proposals submitted, some advantage accrues to the earliest submitters because their proposals are available to public preview prior to the public voting for competitive conferees.
2. During the week of March 17^th through 21^st, NetSquared registered users from all over the globe will vote for the projects that they would most like to see compete in the finals.
3. Finalists are to be announced on March 24^th. In the 10 weeks which follow, the project teams will engage in the detailed design, development, testing, acceptance of their proposed creations.
4. The annual conference takes place on the campus of Cisco Systems in San Jose, May 27^th and 28^th, 2008, where the project teams will present their work, respond to questions from the moderators, audience, press, and virtual attendees. Toward the end of the second day, hundreds of attendees will vote for the winning projects, which will receive a total of $100,000 in awards.