mySociety plans really useful Net projects

Congratulations to Tom Steinberg for getting his "Civic Hacking Fund' - flown at the Bath workshop - off the ground. Well, into the pages of the Guardian, and recipient of a £10,000 first donation, which is pretty impressive for six weeks work.
Tom's ideas for funding civic society software are now now rebranded as charitable project mySociety.org. Tom says in the Guardian: "We are trying to bring together great project ideas, enthusiastic developers and visionary funders to produce cheap, effective services with a demonstrable real world impact. Projects are only limited by the need to have clearly positive social outcomes, and to have costs that barely increase when more people use them." The mySociety website provides a lengthy FAQ and opportunity to submit proposals. The winners will be announced late November. In the second phase mySociety will raise funds and build development teams. Tom cites UpMyStreet.com, FaxYourMp.com, Timebank.org.uk and LiftShare.com as examples of the type of project mySociety would like to foster.

Comments

[David Wilcox]

MySociety is now featured on BBCi as 'Hunt for Napster of Good causes'.
"Tom Steinberg, MySociety founder, said he wanted to try to find Napsters of civil life that, like the music-sharing system, prove enormously useful to people who want to get involved with their community or want to help make society better."
Aim high...

E-democracy champion Steven Clift suggests in his do-wire mailing list that dormant UK Citizens Online Democracy will act as charitable host for mySociety... which would be a fitting way for this 1996 pioneer of e-democracy, formerly led by Richard Stubbs, to re-awaken. Richard is now developing further leading-edge projects in Newham, including the Carpenters Estate Wired up Community

[David Wilcox]

The Guardian blog reported the launch of mySociety on December 3 There's a full list of project ideas