Our friends in London are hosting the second London Social Source event, in affiliation with the global Penguin Day movement.

Adrian from LASA writes:

Social Source UK 05 is for those interested in the potential of free & open source software and methods for the voluntary and non-profit sector.

Programme for SocialSource 2005:

• introductions for those who have had no hands-on contact with Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS)
• case studies
• details of projects going on within the sector using F/OSS tools.
• demonstrations of Open Source software in action
• opportunities for discussion.

All are welcome to attend, whether new to Open Source or already involved in projects, with key stakeholders envisaged as those:

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) announces the creation of a new annual award and is calling for nominations: 

"Free Software Award for Projects of Social Benefit"

Another story from MobileActive: Emily Gertz, our friend at WorldChanging and our prolific MobileActive blogger, profiles Tad Hirsch of txtmob fame and his Speakeasy project in Chinatown in Boston.  Using voice over IP telephony and mobile phones, Speakeasy is a "a software-enabled telephone call center staffed by multilingual community volunteers. Newcomers to Chinatown who are not fluent in English can call the service and connect with someone from the neighborhood who can provide immediate language interpretation, answer questions, and offer advice."

David Geilhufe, Jon Lebowsky, Ethan Zuckerman, Donald Lobo, Steven Wright, Kieran Lal and others are coordinating a volunteer effort by open source developers, web designers, online activists and ordinary citizens to create a single database of all the people missing in the aftermath of Katrina that their friends and family can use to connect with them. David writes:

Refugees can search 20 web sites for lost relatives and still miss their entry on the 21st web site. There is a need to combine all the refugee data from big databases like Red Cross, large posting forums like Craigslist and many other sources on the web. The Katrina PeopleFinder Project seeks to create a single repository combining as many sources of refugee data as possible from all over the web without interrupting existing momentum.

We need help for both regular people and software engineers. Everybody is critical to building a central repository of ALL the refugee records we can find on the web. The Social Source Foundation, CivicSpace Labs and Salesforce.com Foundation are coordinating hundreds of people and organizations, including Craigslist and Earthlink.

Please consider giving us just an hour of you your time to do volunteer data entry. The PeopleFinder Project is seeking volunteers in four primary areas:

 

Inspiration can come from the most unexpected places. I'm a little past halfway through AdvocacyDevII. As I expected, there are a lot of really interesting people here, and I have had some great conversations, and learned a fair bit. It has also been great to meet face-to-face with a fair number of people that I have corresponded with over the last 2 years, but never met.

Aspiration board member Michelle Murrain writes on her personal blog about Convio’s recent decision to take on an anti-gay marriage organization as a client. She argues:

"I think it’s perhaps time for many nonprofit organizations, and the progressive nonprofit community to think carefully about this issue. Few of us think that the ends always justifies the means. Some of us (me included) think that the means by which we work to achieve our mission, affects the mission, sometimes deeply.

I’ve been an advocate for the use of open source software in the nonprofit sector for a while now, for a variety of good reasons. One of which is that are a whole host of really good open source (in fact or in spirit) advocacy tools out there, home grown, with expertise around to help implement it. It is not necessary (nor necessarily cheaper or easier) to go with a service like Convio. There are good choices out there, ones that will help continue to build expertise and good code in our own community (rather than build good code that investors make money off of.)"