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.

You may have heard that John and I will be representing Squarepeg at the upcoming Netsquared Conference at the Cisco conference center in San Jose (we will be the only Portland based project at this event). Did you know you can attend too? Maybe you should take a look at the agenda; we actually think this would be a really fun conference even if we didn’t get to talk about our own dear project. In addition to showcasing 20 other groups like us, the Netsquared team has some exciting speaker sessions lined up. If you want to join us, you better hurry though. Tomorrow, Friday the 16th, is the last day to register for the conference or reserve a discounted hotel room (sorry, we know it’s spendy).

Most of our team just finished finals (congratulations Laura and Polly, graduating seniors!), so we get to work just about full time on Squarepeg in the next few weeks leading up to the conference. If you are going, we would love to connect with you beforehand, so we can make sure we find a time and place to meet-up during the conference. Just send me an email, isaac [at] squarepegged [dot] org. Hope to see you there!

Whew, we have something important to say and we’ve been holding it in for a while. Now that our blog is up and running… Thank You! Thank you everyone who voted for us in the Netsquared Challenge. Here’s an update about the cool stuff we get to do thanks to your votes:

On May 27th and 28th John and I will go to San Jose California for the netsquared conference. Netsquared is leveraging their contacts with popular bloggers and bay area tech companies to bring a lot of talented volunteers to this event. John and I get to talk about Squarepeg with curious and creative people (we love doing that), and maybe even convince some of them to work with us.

Getting out the vote was also a great opportunity for us. Asking loads of friends and family to vote was a convenient excuse to discuss this work we are passionate about. They also gave us great feedback about Squarepeg and helped lead us to more people who want to take up this cause.

Energy. That’s right, we took a risk and put ourselves out there for judgement. Being selected was motivating; it’s really nice to hear that other people think Squarepeg is a cool idea too.

Oh yeah, money too. We get some share of $100,000. Pretty cool, hunh?

We are excited about the conference in May, but we definitely aren’t waiting for the conference to move forward with our project. Come to think of it, maybe you shouldn’t wait either! If you think you’ve spotted some talent, have duffel bags of cash lying around, or just want to encourage us to keep moving along, just send us an email.

cheers, Isaac