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Pitches and Hits at Net2Squared
Tessie Guillermo
| 30 May 2007 - 2:57pm
I love this idea of creating a space for non-profits to make “pitches” of their program (or business) models to the support community: techies, businesses, funders, investors, etc. Providing an open and supportive, but at times tough forum for these organizations to make their pitches, it sets the stage for a more transparent and efficient process for philanthropic investment. Thanks, Net2Squared! I like that even though these projects have much potential to develop as ventures for earned income, they are not yet the social enterprise type organizations that are getting a lot of attention in the venture philanthropy space. Instead, they are much like the nascent, but enterprising endeavors that characterize many of the non-profits CTFC has been supporting for the last 7 years. Several of these organizations are developing technology based social impact projects in a way that is exemplary of the community enterprise concept we’re proofing with our ZeroDivide 2.0 investments strategy. If the Net2squared projects can get traction with the “experts” in the rooms here, then so can our grantee partners.
My role here was as an expert reviewer in the social impact track for 4 of the projects selected to pitch. The expert reviews were divided into three tracks: Social Impact, Tech Innovation and Economic Sustainability. Each of the 21 projects were divided into groups of about 4 and participated in a round robin of “defending” their project to the expert review panels and then answering direct questions from the rest of the audience in each track. My reviews included Maps2.0, Grassroots.org; FamilyFarmed.org; and TakingITGlobal.org. Who says social impact projects can’t develop a business model for financial and social return? None of these groups, for sure!
Like the four projects I reviewed, most of the pitched projects were developing applications and content for the social web. Many were asked to answer the question, “if you build it, will they come?” Answers to that question indicate that there is no dearth of ideas for technology enabled outcomes, however there is much convincing to be done to justify investment in social impact Web2.0 ventures. I was hoping to hear more about original digital content being created and pushed out using innovative technologies, but most of the projects were about social networking and aggregation of existing content. Many were focused around the globe, with developing countries as particular targets. Take a look at all the projects for yourself and let me know if I missed anything.
Unfortunately, I developed a cold and had to skip Day 2 so didn't get to vote on which projects would win the cash prize. Who would get my vote? Would CTFC fund projects like these? Possibly, but we’ll see what comes over the transom since we just launched our new Letter of Inquiry guidelines. Overall, N2Y2 had a good conference design that with some tweaking, TechSoup should develop and brand as the next best thing in not-for-profit meet ups for the not-so-geeky (that's me!) set.
Thanks
Tessie, Thanks so much for 'getting' what we were trying to do,and for leaning into helping it happen.
It was messy! At a certain point, we realized that some people were going to fault us for being insufficiently rigorous and some people were going to fault us for being too competitive and, mutually exclusive though those opinions may be, they're both, to some extent, correct!
When we look at the projects that won, we see two things: (1) *Smart technology voters!... The winners are,clearly, in a small group of the projects that have a real chance of staking out significant market share by virtue of great technological vision and execution. (2)A certain tendency away from the biggest social issues.... The project I personally most regretted not seeing in the top three was the Genocide Intervention Network and I'll quite frankly say that my attitude toward them wasn't based on either their technology or their business model, but about their issue and their potential impact.Even the chance of a small impact on our species' understanding of genocide seemed a worthwhile bet to me. But what the voters concentrated on was the best fit of *technology* to a social model with demonstable (though not necessarily transformational) social impact.
I'd give N2 a B or maybe B+. We can make it much better if we figure out ways of comparing likes to likes, apples to apples. I think we can do that.
You wrote:
"...support community: techies, businesses, funders, investors, etc"
I love that phrase--"support community". That's *exactly* what N2 was about--trying to get different sectors to identify with being part of a support community. Or support eco-system. Our sense here at CM/TS is that N2 did in fact work on that level. Yahoos and Googlers and Ciscos and Funders and VCs and web developers and nonprofits and social entrepreneurs all jointly entertained the idea of what they could all do together.
To be continued. Thanks again for your great post.
/d
Original content and innovative technologies
Tessie,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on N2Y2. You hit the nail on the head here, noting the difficulties in such a dynamic petri dish while commending CompuMentor on holding this unique space very well. As a blogger I sat in many of the feedback sessions (the in-depth grills) and wanted to hear tougher questions on original content and innovative technologies. I saw few new models to follow in the technology world; the financing and social network aggregation success stories were much more helpful to hear as a social venture leader in this mix.
The takeaway value from N2Y2 happened around the tables in quiet conversations, on the Meebo backchannel and through apps like Twitter that connected participants in different ways as they sat in the room together. While presenters in the physical room talk about websites and toolkits the digitistas whip out the tools to move the conversation to new applets and bridging widgets that convey a message while satisfying organizational needs. The informal wifi discussions shifted away from credentials and toward a more mashed-up collaborative understanding of how we can work together to shift the dial.
As with any gathering, value can be found at many layers and intersections....I found great value in the meetup and look forward to future NetSquared events.