News

We finished up the Chipin white label product today and had a very quiet launch. Since it is not a consumer facing product, there was not major public push. Instead, we sent off the API keys to the sandbox for each of our customers and also made a general sandbox available for prospective clients. The new system is pretty sweet and we can’t wait for the first client to push it live. Now comes the hard part… waiting for the “other” engineers to start implementation. It is a bit nerve wracking to sit and wait… but it does mean that we can finally open up the sales channel again and begin to sign up new clients.

I am off to the NTEN conference next week and will be speaking on a panel about widgets with Beth Kanter and Marshall Kirkpatrick (of Netsquared, Techcrunch and Splashcast fame). I am also meeting up with a whole bunch of really cool folks for different conversations.

NTC is really going to be fun as I am looking forward to seeing old friends, colleagues and names that I have not put a face to yet. I spent many years on the Nonprofit technology sector having started a nonprofit while in Law School called Netcorps that recruited college kids to provide technology assistance to social justice nonprofits. We also built some of the very first online advocacy campaigns (fax/email your congressperson). I was also the founding board member of NTEN way back when. I know many of the folks that started in this sector with me are no longer active, but it is always nice to think back to the many fun times we had together…

It is going to feel great to get back into the fold of things… and I hope that Chipin can continue to play a role as both a fundraising widget and social advocacy tool.

There is a post today on Techcrunch about Agape, the new stealth project by Sean Parker (Napster, Plaxo, Facebook). Parker’s goal, he says, is to apply the same ideas around virality that worked so well on his previous projects to the idea of altruism and activism. That is gonna be pretty cool if it is a friendster meets facebook meets meetup meets chipin… chipin? Who knows, maybe there’s a fit. We are working fast and furious on the next generation chipin.com site and should have a beta preview up by end of April. It is being totally redesigned from the ground up using our own white label system for the widgets, contributions, and tracking with a new front end that will include multiple levels of social networking and community features.

I can’t wait for April.. it is gonna be such a great month of activity. I hope to find more time to blog about what we are up to.. I promised Shel I would.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 30th, 2007 at 4:26 pm and is filed under ChipBlog.