Sunlight Foundation

I've been out here in California this week attending the second annual NetSquared Conference, a very stimulating presentation of 21 different projects that were selected by the community out of a 120 or so to be presented in front of an assembled group of 350. The end goal? Not only to win a share of a $100,000, but also exposure to a wealth of technical and business expertise that was assembled to help nurture and develop these web entrepreneurs. After two days of extensive evaluation based on three criteria: social impact, use of technology and economic sustainability, I couldn't have been more pleased with the results. The winner was Sunlight grantee — MAPLight.org. Coming in second? Sunlight partners from the Participatory Culture Foundation who are working with us on OpenCongress.org. (They won for their "democracy player" — Miro — open source video software. Nice! Congrats to them and to all those who presented.