Vote for THRONGZ and Support Your Local Blogger

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A good friend (Charles Forsythe) and I have been working on a project called Throngz to help social activists more readily connect with one another online.  Although we had nonprofit advocates in mind when we created it, Throngz can be used by any community of people.

Throngz is a web-based tool that calls people together for discussion from different parts of the Internet in real time.  Once they’re brought together into a single “cyber-salon,” they can discuss topics of mutual interest or simply shoot the cyber-breeze.  You can read more about Throngz by clicking here.

We submitted Throngz to the NetSquared Innovation Award competition, and we very much need your support.

Part of the competition involves a get-out-the-vote effort, so we’re asking White Courtesy Telephone readers and supporters to visit the Netsquared site and vote for Throngz.

Here’s how to do it:

1.  Please take a minute to visit the NetSquared site and register.  You’ll need to enter a valid e-mail address (this is where they’ll send your password).  You can go to the registration page by clicking here.

2.  Go to the e-mail account you gave when you registered and retrieve the password the NetSquared folks e-mailed to you.

3.  Next, go the Netsquared login page.  Enter your username and password to login to the NetSquared site.

4.  Finally (you’re almost finished!), go to your ballot (click here) and enter your choices.

Please, PLEASE for the love of God let one of those choices be THRONGZ: The Online Discussion Space That Comes And Gets You.

Please note that you’ll need to vote for a minimum of five projects for any of your votes to count.  Fellow blogger Sean Stannard-Stockton gives us his favorite picks here.  You can read about all the other projects by clicking here.  I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that my blogger colleague Holden also submitted his GiveWell project to the competition.  Twenty projects will be chosen from around the world, so we both have a shot at the prize.*

This sounds complicated, but it really isn’t.  If I’ve made a hash of explaining this, you can review the voting instructions here.  If you get stuck, please send me an e-mail.

VOTING CLOSES ON MONDAY, APRIL 16, SO PLEASE TAKE A MINUTE TO CAST YOUR VOTE!

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After you’ve voted, please let your cyber-buddies know about Throngz.  You and they will be invited to a no-holds-barred, online party here at WCT.  The Countess Apraxina will distribute signed photographs; Chickpea will model the season’s latest bonnets; and Miss Dixie Moline will entertain us with her throaty rendition of Embraceable You .

As you might have already guessed, the motivation for Throngz came from my own experiences on the Internet.  The Story of Joe Sector has in many ways been my story.  My nonprofit colleagues and I have often just missed one another in cyberspace.  Like Joe, I’ve frequently squandered my time on the web in search of that perfect online discussion in real-time.

I realize there’s much more to building social change movements than simply facilitating discussion on the Internet.  As my colleague Sally mentioned in an earlier post, we bring to the Web all the deficits, all the bad habits of our lives offline.  How can we possibly make a good omelette out of bad eggs?

These themes have been picked up here and here.

Nevertheless I’m hopeful that, over time, all our Web exchanges— penetrating political analyses offered free of charge to all comers, the lessons from our contemporary mad Socrates, the younger voices gleefully shouting down the old—will dissuade us of the view that “humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.”

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* Winners will be flown to the NetSquared conference at the end of May where they’ll get a chance to pitch their projects to funders.  The top three projects will also get the lion’s share of a $100K kitty.  If my partner Charles and I are lucky enough to win, we’ll use our prize money to hire a Java programmer.

Comments

[Phil]

Voted, as requested. Interesting project.

[Scruggs]

Me too. Jason Z -- a friend to eleemosynary blogging network -- has some entries from his community and there's the Huichol Cultural Survival project, if people are looking for recommendations to fill out their ballots.

[Gerry]

If you haven't filled out all your selections (you need to vote for at least five to be counted, and can vote for as many as ten), please consider supporting Source Tree as well as the other worthy projects suggested here.

[Gerry]

Ok, another try to get the link right: Source Tree.

[Gerry]

Thronz looks interesting, Albert. Just you and Charles working on it? I encourage you to connect the project to SourceTree which will go forward whether or not we get the net-squared thing. The idea is that it will have services like Source Forge and then some, but more importantly build community around the open source projects and connect them together more robustly. More code sharing, etc.

[Albert Ruesga]

Charles, one of Charles's software developer friends, and I. We’ve been sending messages around to try and recruit a volunteer Java GUI wizard. If we’re lucky enough to win one of the 20 Innovation Awards, we’ll leverage that to do a little more recruiting. Know anybody you think might be interested?

SourceTree sounds cool, Gerry. I’ll add it to my list today.

[erasmus]

Woof woof, cyberdog. You got my vote today. I made my wife and kids vote too. Best wishes.

[Michael Maranda]

I think Hooze is also vote-worthy. http://www.netsquared.org/projects/proposals/hooze-wagn-organically-grown-public-data-products-and-companies

[Michael Maranda]

Hooze.

(Getting the link right)

[Dee Hicks]

Thanks for the note, Phil A. I had been out of the country and hadnt been checking email. This sounds like a worthy project especially for people who spend more time on the internet than I do!

[Karen Plunket]

Hi Albert - didn't have time to read it all (will later) but you have my vote. Miss you (not working). See you out on the Potomac - Love to Max XOXOXO Karen