Netsquared Conference was Awesome!
Last week John and I got back from a grueling conference at Cisco HQ in San Jose. The conference was hosted by Netsquared, a project of Techsoup, and they brought together a big bunch of the most active people in the Internet and social change space. Squarepeg was one of 21 featured projects competing for the hearts and the votes of all the attendees. We didn’t end up taking home one of the top cash prizes (all the big winners have public beta or full release sites up, and we think they earned their rewards). We were able to bring home a few grand, receive some wonderful feedback, and meet a lot of really great people who are now interested in Squarepeg. We were a bit slow to blog about the experience because we’re still synthesizing and learning from all the interesting ideas we heard (and read about after the fact on blogs, video interviews, etc.). We couldn’t possibly convey everything that happened during this action packed conference, but we’d love to share a few ideas that caught our interest.
People really liked that Squarepeg is a communication tool for people who are organizing face to face meet-ups, rather than primarily a place to express ideas, concerns, and solidarity (exclusively) online. I guess others also feel room for innovation in this niche.
We’ve always said that integrating our technology with what’s happening on other sites or with other tools is very important. A few people at the conference actually thought that bringing a recommender system and combatting information overload on other popular Internet spaces is one of the most interesting things we are doing. We’ve discussed possibilities for open social apps, Facebook apps, etc., but of course the issue at stake is deciding what to focus on. What do you think? Is disseminating the recommender technology to other social sites as important as creating the perfect environment for effective activism on our own destination site? Shoot us an email if you have ideas.
For two days we met with 20 other featured projects, and even more Internet change makers who represented their own work less formally. Some of these projects were way inspiring (at times even intimidatingly cool!), but we noticed one significant disconnect almost across the board. Most of these innovators are building tools to facilitate more and better conversations, without addressing (at least during their presentations) whether the stakeholders in any given cause or organization are ready for more public conversation. Props to Holly at NTEN for blogging about this before us. Her explanation is that some people aren’t very comfortable (yet) with publishing their thoughts for the whole world to see. I agree with her, but I don’t think that’s the only important explanation. Frequently, facilitating a dialog with just one of the many causes I care about isn’t direct enough social change for me to bump it to the top of my long list of priorities. Sure I might consider myself a stakeholder if I think the cause is important, but is it enough of a priority that I want to drive the conversation? Or, if I already feel like I’m an expert, is more conversation with mostly newbies what I want/need? The answer to that question has a lot to do with the individual involved, how their personality fits with they cause they have identified, and how the particular cause/nonprofit is engaging them. These are problems we’re trying to address, but this post is long enough though, so we’ll blog more about that soon.
All in all it was a wonderful conference, and we’d like to offer one more huge thank you to all the online voters who sent us there, and to all the other conference projects and attendees. And of course, netsquared/techsoup, you are uniquely wonderful and we promise to be in touch. You’ll are great.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:41 pm
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