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Voting is now closed for the 2009 Gamechangers Awards. You can still comment on nominees below.
The Community Choice winner will be invited to present their game-changing ideas in a keynote session at the We Media Miami 2009 Global Forum. That's Feb. 24-26, and you're invited too (registration details here).
What's a Game Changer? Join the conversation in the We Media Community.
The 2009 Finalists
| Overall Rating |  |
URL: http://www.ohio.com/news/american_dream
What: After the 2007 U.S. housing crisis became the 2008 global banking crisis, big media institutions in the U.S. were quick to point out that they’d reported on the looming problems all along. The banking meltdown still seemed to catch many people off guard, everywhere. Perhaps less so in Akron, Ohio. Here’s an example of a local news company that went much further - not only reporting extensively on what the housing crisis meant to ordinary people, but launching a campaign and community partnership to help individuals and local institutions learn lessons and avoid problems in the future. The American Dream series from the Akron Beacon Journal ripped an old page from what used to be known as Civic Journalism - the belief that journalism could be combined with an agenda for civic engagement. With the American Dream, this local newspaper company changed the game for big media by showing that journalism with passion, purpose and an agenda for community improvement could still be the cornerstone of a journalistic enterprise - even from a big daily newspaper company struggling with declining influence, relevance and revenue.
Nominated for: Purpose, Social Impact
Categories: Purpose, Social Impact
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URL: www.beanstockd.com
What: It’s just another environmental blog, launched by three college roommates form Harvard who discovered their eco-alteregos during their junior year abroad in Paris. But it’s NOT just any old blog. This one combines eco with chic and comes up with an online magazine that shows how young people with passion, purpose and attitude can use the web to bring pop culture smarts, humor and entertainment to the green movement. Al Gore may have more influence with his books, movies and fancy KeyNotes; Beanstockd has way more fun.
Nominated for: Purpose
Categories: Purpose
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URL: www.blogher.com
What: Reacting to blogging conferences and academic discussions dominated by techy men, three tech, marketing and publishing saavy women - Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort Page and Jory Des Jardins - launched a blog conference in 2005 for women. The conference took off, a year later major advertisers flocked to hang out with the big decision-makers in consumer spending, and the conference rapidly evolved into an online hub and advertising network for women bloggers. The BlogHer network today has 2,200 blog affiliates and venture capital investment. BlogHer changed the game for blogging. By building a conversation and a business around women who wanted to talk about subjects other than technology and blogging itself, BlogHer propelled blogging further into the mainstream and showed that blogs by women about health, diet, parenting, sex and other topics had a place alongside blogs by men about computers. What’s more, they had a business model and an audience.
Nominated for: Purpose, Business Model
Categories: Business Model, Purpose
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URL: www.borninseptember.org
What: A former New York City club hopper and party promoter finds purpose in bringing clean drinking water to Africa, and changes the game for cause marketing by cleverly combining powerful photo and video story-telling with social networking for good.
Nominated for: Social Impact, Pattern Change, Story-telling
Categories: Pattern Change, Social Impact, Story
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URL: http://www.cbc.ca/nextprimeminister
What: Showed that pop culture metaphors and reality TV techniques could be combined to produce a popular and entertaining media experience rich with information and civic value.
Nominated for: Story, purpose
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URL: http://www.creativevisions.org/
What: Founded in memory of a Reuters photographer killed in Somalia, CVF supports “creative activists.” In the connected culture CVF changes the game for all media by emphasizing the power of communications to inform and catalyze movements for change.
Nominated for: Social Impact, Purpose.
Categories: Purpose, Social Impact
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URL: http://www.viewmagazine.tv
What: David defines the future of professional journalism: immensely visual, built around video and voiceover, with a strong design sensibility, and production skills unmatched by mere mortals.
Nominated for: Story telling
Categories: Story
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URL: www.clickable.com
Clickable simplifies and aggregates search advertising for small businesses. Clickable gives online advertisers greater control over their purchases and lets them manage and track marketing across the three major ad networks: Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft. The result: clickable demystifies and changes the game for search advertising for small businesses and changes the business of advertising.
Nominated for: Business model, pattern change
Categories: Business Model, Pattern Change
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URL: http://www.design21sdn.com/
What: Uses the power of online social networking and traditional marketing to organizes people with skills - designers - who apply the wisdom of their crowd to design things that make the world better - like a huge water barrel that can be rolled, replacing a smaller one carried on a woman’s head.
Nominated for: Social impact, pattern change, purpose
Categories: Pattern Change, Purpose, Social Impact
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URL: http://labs.digg.com/
What: Digg Labs is a quiet outpost of the online popularity contest Digg. The experimental Labs projects, created with design firm Stamen Designs, reveal the power of data visualization. See, for instance, how an individual’s recommendations evolve in the Arc (http://labs.digg.com/arc/), how Digg users mass around individual stories in The Swarm (http://labs.digg.com/swarm/), or the simple tagcloud version of Digg’s database in BigSpy (http://labs.digg.com/bigspy/). The labs change the game for any digital services built around data and presentation of ideas.
Nominated for: Story telling
Categories: Story
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URL: www.dotsub.com
What: Crowdsourcing for translation of videos, dotsub uses technology to smash borders and help ideas travel around the world. Michael also adeptly combines a commercial vision with clear social purpose and impact.
Nominated for: Purpose
Categories: Purpose
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URL: http://go.footnote.com/
What: Re-wrote the rules on how to build interactive experiences through databases and images. A scanned image of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, became a gateway to personal story-telling, database searches and collective story-telling.
Nominated for: Digital story-telling, pattern change
Categories: Pattern Change, Story
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URL: http://www.freewheelinwaytogo.com
What: Bike sharing was a hit when launched in Paris in 2007. It was cheap, convenient and eco-friendly. End of story? Not so fast. A U.S. health insurer changed the game and wrote a new story. Humana promotes its business agenda - lower health care costs - through a state-of-the-art bike sharing program tested during the 2008 U.S. political party conventions in Denver and St. Paul. Freewheelin promotes its social and business agenda through communication - made possible by wireless/mobile and social networking technology. When you ride a Feewheelin bike, wireless networks track your mileage and calories burned. Social networking tools help individuals track their personal successes and, by calculating reduced carbon emmisions, their contributions to the shared health and wellness of their community and the planet.
Nominated for: Purpose, Social Impact, Business Model, Pattern Change.
Categories: Business Model, Pattern Change, Purpose, Social Impact
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URL: http://www.geniusrocket.com
What: An open, crowdsourcing marketplace for the advertising industry - and a hub for viral marketing. Anyone can compete to make ads for anyone. Brands pay for the most creative work, which can come from anywhere; and GeniusRocket offers prizes for the best work. The model disrupts the traditional business relationship between advertisers and agencies. That creates opportunities for young and independent creatives - and helps advertisers find them.
Nominated For: Pattern Change, Business Model
Categories: Business Model, Pattern Change
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URL: http://www.innocentive.com
What: An “open innovation community” founded in 2001, Innocentive applied theories of crowdsourcing and “the wisdom of the crowd” to re-invent how pharmaceutical and other science-based companies acquire and pay for basic research. Innocentive connects “seekers” and “solvers.” The seekers - companies with specific research needs - broadcast their needs to a global network of solvers. Some are chemists with traditional pedigrees. Some are talented citizen scientists. Individual solvers earn cash for their work. Now Innocentive has teamed with SAP to expand the concept to computer science and IT research.
Nominated For: Pattern Change, Business Model, Social Impact
Categories: Business Model, Pattern Change, Social Impact
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URL: http://www.istockphoto.com
What: In 2001, the launch of iStockphoto changed the stock imagery universe forever. It revolutionized access to quality imagery and video by selling crowdsourced royalty-free stock images and video clips at prices starting at $1, versus the traditional several hundred to thousand dollar price tag.
One of the first social networks to share significant content sales revenue with its members. In 2007, iStock sold 18.25 million images and videos, made more than $70 million in revenues and paid more than $20 million in royalties to its contributors.
Nominated for: Business model
Categories: Business Model
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URL: http://www.number27.org/
What: Artist/designer/developer Jonathan Harris creates new metaphors for storytelling with multiple perspectives, dimensions, entry points and timelines for story-telling in the digital age.
Nominated for: Story
Categories: Story
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URL: www.mediastorm.org
People: Brian Storm and team
What: A multimedia journalist changes the game for multimedia and visual journalism by bringing Hollywood production skills and criteria to non-fiction story-telling. He also creates a business model and sets a benchmark for independent production companies that can bring highest-caliber story-telling production to organizations worldwide.
Nominated for: Story, Business Model
Categories: Business Model, Story
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URL: www.newstrust.net
What: NewsTrust solves a riddle for the world of limitless information: How do you find the most important and trustworthy journalism upon which you base your actions, politics and life decisions? NewsTrust collects detailed analysis and ratings for a community of journalism experts (or addicts). NewsTrust ratings are more detailed than popularity contests like Digg, and the service hints at a day when trust data might be incorporated into search results, blogs and original sources. As information sources and access points proliferate, NewsTrust changes the game for news publishers who have long relied on reputation, branding and popularity to “prove” their trustworthiness; and it changes the game for consumers, who can now look to more detailed analysis of individual stories for clues about a story’s trustworthiness.
Nominated for: Purpose, Social Impact, Pattern Change.
Categories: Pattern Change, Purpose, Social Impact
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URL: http://www.npr.org/api/index
What: The major public radio broadcaster in the U.S. has been a pioneer in supporting digital formats and distribution of its content - and it’s one of the major producers of podcasts on iTunes for the Apple iPod. This year NPR demonstrated the game-changing nature of the connected culture by offering its archive of media, including most audio since 1995, to web developers worldwide. Developers can now access and remix NPR content into new products and services. This isn’t the first media API - BBC offers access to a 7-day archive of radio and TV programs. But that’s just seven days. NPR’s API dramatically changes the game for news and information, and we expect to see similar efforts rolling out soon from other major news providers worldwide. Next we’ll be watching for the result: news services, interfaces and experiences produced by independent developers that are better than those produced by the news companies themselves.
Nominated for: Pattern Change
Categories: Pattern Change
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URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/off-the-bus/
What: Inspired an army of non-professional reporters to shadow the candidates for the U.S. presidency. While they and their reporting might easily have vanished amid the sea of professional journalists, the Off The Bus crew managed to come up with unique story angles and reporting, including Mayhill Fowler’s April 2008 recording of Barak Obama’s private comments at a fund raising event. Off The Bus raised the bar for citizens journalism by showing that amateurs could work consistently and substantively in an organized fashion over a long period of time, aided by professional editors, presentation and promotion. The effort validated a new Pro-Am vision of news - and changed the game for journalism.
Nominated for: Purpose, Social Impact, Story
Categories: Purpose, Social Impact, Story
| Overall Rating | |
URL: http://www.onevoicemovement.org
What: Applies online organizing to end conflict and create peace in the Middle East. Changes the game for online campaigns by using one to bring polarized groups together. Tests a new definition of soft power in the connected culture. Old soft power: governments seek to influence public opinion to win diplomatic upper hand. New: Public opinion influences governments to define and drive diplomacy.
Nominated for: Purpose, Pattern Change
Categories: Pattern Change, Purpose
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URL: http://www.photovoice.org/html/galleryandshop/photogalleries/index.html
What: Founders Anna Blackman and Tiffany Fairey changed the game for participatory media before citizen journalism or blogs were a big deal. Starting with photo projects in Vietnam and Nepal in 1998, their idea was simple but aspirational on the grandest order: put cameras into the hands of ordinary people to document the stories of the powerless. Photovoice has given voice, through powerful still images, to refugee groups, street children, HIV/AIDS sufferers and others. The results have been breathtaking and remain, to this day, a beacon of inspiration and a counterpunch to anyone who says citizen’s media is worthless.
Nominated for: Purpose, Social Impact, Story
Categories: Purpose, Social Impact, Story
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URL: http://www.pulitzercenter.org
People: Jon Sawyer
What: Developing a hybrid business model that couples small grant philanthropy with marketing, sales and outreach to fund global journalism and give it wide exposure through commercial partners.
Nominated for: Business Model, Community, Pattern Change
Categories: Business Model, Community, Pattern Change
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URL: http://www.reuters.com/iraq
People: Reuters Media Produced by MediaStorm
What: Redefines marketing and self-promotion for news by using news to tell and sell the story of Reuters and its journalism. It’s a multimedia story worthy of exhibition in a museum, deep with information and heart-wrenching photography and video presented in an easy-to-use screen designed for self-paced non-linear viewing and contemplation.
Nominated for: Story, Purpose
| Overall Rating | |
URL: http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/
What: The granddaddy of citizen science, launched in 1999, uses idle time on personal computers to speed the analysis of astronomical data in search of signs of life elsewhere in the universe. SETI@Home, though techie in nature, paved the way for many other citizen science projects that tap the intelligence and muscle-power of amateur volunteers who gather data for research projects such as tracking the migration of monarch butterflies, the spring budding of flowers and the spread of the deadly HN51 avian flu virus.
Nominated For: Pattern Change
Categories: Pattern Change
| Overall Rating | |
URL: http://www.socialvibe.com
What: Creates a new business model by combining brand and cause marketing with social networks. You choose the cause, attach your favorite brand, then launch YOUR campaign to market and raise money for your cause.
Nominated for: Social Impact, Pattern Change, Business Model
Categories: Business Model, Pattern Change, Social Impact
| Overall Rating | |
URL: http://hypem.com/
What: Tracks, aggregates music discussions across the web and creates easy access to the music people are talking about. Changes the game for knowledge by aggregating ideas from many sources in a practical way that enables commerce and personal enrichment. Makes Digg look like a high school project.
Nominated for: Pattern Change
Categories: Pattern Change
| Overall Rating | |
URL: http://www.TheKnot.com
People: David Liu and Carley Roney
What: David and Carley changed the game for wedding information and commerce and magazine publishing in general with a new business model - the magalog - that blended old and new media with national and local advertising.
Nominated for: Pattern Change, Business Model
Categories: Business Model, Pattern Change
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URL: http://twitter.com
What: Launched in 2006, Twitter lets you broadcast short text messages from your phone to anyone who wants to follow you. It’s simple, it doesn’t always work, and while some digerati love it, others detest it. None of which matters. Twitter changed the game for mobile media and personal expression. It’s not for everyone - but it puts SMS broadcasting into everyone’s hands, and that changed the game for eye-witness journalism, networking and personal expression.
Nominated for: Pattern Change
Categories: Pattern Change
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URL: http://uc.princeton.edu/main/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
People: Princeton University and Partners
What: The UChannel (also known as the University Channel) makes videos of academic lectures and events from all over the world available to the public. It changed the game for universities and democratizes knowledge - esoteric lectures from the Ivory Tower can now be the basis of global conversations open to anyone.
Nominated for: Purpose
Categories: Purpose
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URL: http://ushahidi.com/
What: Ushahidi means “testimony” in Swahili. When Kenya’s presidential elections turned to riots, killings and a media blackout, bloggers and techies there kicked into action to build a mobile news network in four days. They pumped information through friends and family living abroad, and then back throughout Kenya via mobile SMS. The effort changed the game for ordinary citizens, for crisis reporting in the developing world - and for authoritarians everywhere who hadn’t heard of We Media.
Nominated for: Pattern Change, Purpose
Categories: Pattern Change, Purpose
| Overall Rating | |
URL: http://www.spore.com
What: Visionary game designer behind The Sims and Spore, Wright epitomizes the powerful combination of creative zeal with intellectual curiosity and technical genius to transform mere products into cultural experiences deep with information, meaning and resonance. When gaming surpassed film as the most profitable entertainment medium worldwide, Wright was there to make sure that at least some of the biggest gaming hits rivaled Hollywood’s greatest story-telling achievements. His video games are powered by the imagination of the players - and that also helps control the development costs.
Nominated for: Story, Social impact.
Categories: Social Impact, Story
| Overall Rating | |
URL: http://hub.witness.org
People: Peter Gabriel and others
What: Peter Gabriel’s Witness was a visionary game changer when it was created a decade ago: putting cameras in the hands of ordinary people to document and bring world attention to human rights issues. Its video sharing web site, Witness Hub, leaps forward by networking digital photographers and videographers. The goal isn’t citizen journalism. It’s documenting abuse, saving lives, shining light on those who avoid it.
Nominated for: Purpose
Categories: Purpose
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URL: www.zefrank.com
What: A creative artist re-defines citizen media as high art. It’s video, comedy and social commentary wrapped in highest-order production techniques. ZeFrank expresses social resonance as a key quality of digital story-telling. He changes the game for writing, performance and digital story-telling.
Nominated for: Pattern change, social impact and digital story-telling.
Categories: Pattern Change, Social Impact, Story
Rate Them All
- Footnote/The Wall (16695)
- SocialVibe (1403)
- iStockphoto (1536)
- David Dunkley Gyimah, Founder, Viewmag (718)
- Beanstockd (539)
- The Knot (253)
- BlogHer (709)
- Design 21 Social Design Network (625)
- ZeFrank (283)
- Freewheelin (273)
- OneVoice (222)
- PhotoVoice (179)
- Reuters Iraq Anniversary (160)
- Ushahidi (89)
- Canada's Next Great Prime Minister/CBC (70)
- Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting (71)
- Witness/Witness Hub (64)
- Akron Beacon Journal/American Dream (47)
- Off The Bus/Huffington Post (45)
- MediaStorm (17)
- UChannel (37)
- NewsTrust (41)
- Creative Visions Foundation (28)
- NPR API (30)
- Innocentive (27)
- Born in September/Charity Water (8)
- Twitter (40)
- Genius Rocket (9)
- David Kidder, Founder, Clickable.com (18)
- Digg Labs/Stamen Designs (10)
- Jonathan Harris (7)
- Dotsub (4)
- The Hype Machine (4)
- SETI@HOME (4)
- Will Wright (3)