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The Elfenworks Foundation In Harmony With

Mashup Camp

There's lots of news afoot about international poverty, less on the story of domestic poverty. With 37 million living below the poverty line and another 57 million at risk today, The Elfenworks Foundation (TEF) along with Mashup Camp hopes to change that in a new partnership this November. [ press release ]

mashup - a digital media file containing any or all of text, graphics, audio, video and animation drawn from pre-existing sources, to create a new derivative work.
-Wikipedia

We are proud to announce our newest pathfinder partner, Mashup Camp. This year, The Elfenworks Foundation will present the inaugural Elfenworks 'Best Social Justice Mashup' prize, in recognition of the mashup that best uses technology to illustrate the pressing problems of domestic poverty. By bringing together various pieces of the puzzle, mashups can really breathe life into data, making the story more compelling. John Watkins, CTO for Elfenworks Foundation, has coined the term "conscienceware".

The creation of the Elfenworks Best Social Justice Mashup Prize for the 2008 Mashup Camp to be held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, asks the developers who attend Mashup Camp to consider how we can best tell the story of the rise in domestic poverty - a rise that locally has one in five kids in Silicon Valley at risk for hunger (two in five in San Mateo County where TEF is based).

"A picture is worth a thousand words, but we think a mashup is worth a thousand stats"
– Lauren Speeth, CEO Elfenworks Foundation

The Elfenworks 'Best Social Justice Mashup' prize is the latest in a series of partnerships that we have entered into to promote domestic poverty awareness. The alliances encourage creative efforts to bring to light important social justice issues. The mashup prize complements similar efforts in film-making and songwriting that Elfenworks sponsors through the college-based Campus MovieFest and Campus MusicFest. We look forward to many outstanding entries and urge participating technologists to submit their entries for consideration in the Elfenworks Best Social Justice Mashup contest.

Information for Participants

One award available, $2500, paid from The Elfenworks Foundation. In accepting the award money, awardee agrees to allow us the non-exclusive right in perpetuity, to post the mashup on our website and/or another partner nonprofit site such as Stanford University's 'inequality.com.'

Elfenworks reserves the right to update these rules through the start of Mashup Camp in November. Visit www.elfenworks.org/harmony_mashupcamp.html or stop by our table for the final rules. Developers may use RSS feeds from a list which will be posted on our site at www.elfenworks.org/harmony_mashupcamp.html as well as available at our table at the camp. Other feeds can be used as long as developers touch base with our team first.

Examples of RSS feeds:

Here is a great implementation of an effective mashup:

On day three of camp (competition day), developers will submit their mashups to our team of judges for consideration. The Elfenworks Foundation technology team will judge all entries, and will solicit input from the hosts of Mashup Camp. Elfenworks intends to present the winners with the check at the end of the day. Here are our rules:

  1. Domestic poverty related (as opposed to international) in some fashion
  2. Must have a "Ripple" effect! (inspire, solve, incite)
  3. Must have a clear definition of problem/solution or statement of value of information in the design.
  4. Must be cooler than hell and damn-near impossible to do without a mashup! :-D
  5. There are a number of ways to create a mash-up and Yahoo has a tool that may help you get started and understand how some of it works: http://pipes.yahoo.com
  6. Must submit Mashup to mashup.contest@elfenworks.org by 9:00 a.m. PST on Wednesday, November 19, 2008. An Entrant must submit a link to their mashup application along with a clear definition of problem/solution or statement of value of information in the design.

About Mashup Camp

Mashup Camp is a 3-day unconference-style event where developers decide which application program interfaces (APIs) and development tools to use when building the next generation of Web applications. Such API and tool adoption ultimately determines which development platforms will succeed on the Web. Part of TechWeb�s family of global brands, Mashup Camp is community-driven, with much of its content created by participants during the event, generating collaboration and idea sharing in an efficient and rapid format. Since the first Mashup Camp in February 2006, seven camps have been developed along with a hands-on training component that allows vendors to present focused information about their APIs and other mashup solutions. More information about Mashup Camp November 17-19, 2008 (including how to enroll!) is available at www.mashupcamp.com.

About the Computer History Museum

The mission of the Computer History Museum is to preserve and present for posterity the artifacts and stories of the information age. Established in 1999, the Museum plays a unique role in the history of the computing revolution and its worldwide impact on the human experience. The Museum, dedicated to the preservation and celebration of computing history, is home to one of the largest international collections of computing artifacts in the world, encompassing computer hardware, ephemera, photographs, moving images, documents and software. For more, visit www.computerhistory.org.