Our Proposal to Google

Back in September we entered the Google Project 10 contest. With over 100,000 entries it was like playing the lottery. Still, it was fun to participate and submit an idea. I think our elevator story is worth telling the world. Who knows. If we are not chosen in the top 100 maybe someone else will fund our idea.

Here was our proposal:
(Due to potential copyrights and domain name reservations "WorldHubs" is not the real name we submitted to Google.)

Our goal for "WorldHubs" is the development a global web resource similar to Wikipedia but focused exclusively on solving world problems. Our vision is to build distinct community “wheels” helping people solve problems in Information Technology, Energy, Government, Environment, Health, and Education. What makes WorldHubs unique is the convergence of rich content, inexpensive web conferencing, and new Collective Intelligence techniques to help solve world problems.

Our first WorldHub, supporting Information Technology, is already in beta at www.ecmhub.org. Introduced less than two weeks ago, ECMHUB.org is the world's largest web portal for the Enterprise Content Management industry supporting over 40 communities with 6,000 daily articles including blogs, news, webcasts, events, discussions, videos, and industry challenges.

Built from the ground up as a centralized web resource, ECMHUB is the most unique web portal on Earth for these distinct reasons:

• The website, constructed with Google App Engine, Tag Clouds, and AJAX is lightning fast, extremely easy to navigate, and aggregates an entire industry including related news and information into a centralized “hub”.
• ECMHUB incorporates free web conferencing to encourage members to solve problems and collaborate in real-time.
• Following the techniques of leading organizations in Collective Intelligence including MIT (Center for Collective Intelligence) and InnoCentive, ECMHUB brings together “Seekers” and “Solvers” in an unique, online community-approach to solve world problems.
  

Unlike existing social networks or wikis, WorldHubs help people solve problems by combining rich content within a framework of web collaboration. For instance, suppose you are a principle at a public school and you must reduce costs by $75,000. Not knowing where to turn you learn about WorldHubs. Unlike traditional Internet searching,WorldHub for Education already aggregates the information you need. Exploring the site, you review blogs, videos and webcasts about “creative financing”. Reading one blog you learn about a past “WorldHub Challenge”. The outcome of the challenge was several unique cost savings programs. Wanting to learn more, you schedule a free web conference. During the web conference you meet the original blogger and together you “screenshare” copies of spreadsheets, contracts, and PDF's outlining the results of the challenge. Afterwards, you immediately contact your school board and propose the adaptation of similar programs within your own community.

WorldHubs provide unique, Web 2.0 infrastructure to connect people together to innovate. ECMHUB, already in beta as a WorldHub for Information Technology, directly benefits IT professionals including vendors, consultants, government, and commercial organizations. If funding is provided to expand our concept to other industries we could potentially directly benefit millions of people across the globe.

“While people have talked about collective intelligence for decades, new communication technologies—especially the Internet—now allow huge numbers of people all over the planet to work together in new ways. The recent successes of systems like Google and Wikipedia suggest that the time is now ripe for many more such systems....” Quote from MIT Center of Collective Intelligence.

By leveraging web technology, inexpensive collaboration tools, and problem solving techniques of Collective Intelligence, WorldHubs is already leading the way in re-purposing the web for focused problem solving. With funding from Google we can quickly take our expertise and existing web infrastructure (already on Google) and scale it to a global level.