NetGain is asking everyone for their ideas and concerns about our digital future. It seems like a spinoff of crowdsourcing with some big backers and some filtering. The big backers include the Knight, MacArthur, Open Society, Mozilla, and Ford Foundations. They aren’t promising funding or prizes but it sure seems like a good thing for them to like your idea. Here’s their proposal or request…

What is the NetGain Challenge?

The NetGain Challenge is an opportunity for you to help us identify the biggest challenges of our digital future.

We want you to think big, to surprise us and provoke us, to push us to think in new ways about the challenges and the opportunities.

There is no prize, no promise of funding – we are simply asking you to help us think more strategically about the road ahead.

Participate in the NetGain Challenge

Give us your best analysis, in 1000 characters or less, of the biggest challenges that lay ahead of us.

How can technology make democracies more participatory and responsive? How will we connect the entire world’s population to the Internet and make sure the benefits of information technology are broadly shared? How will we archive all information and make this knowledge accessible? How can we encourage more technologists to make public interest work part of their career path?

We want you to think big.

Submit your challenge by clicking the orange button to the right and help us focus on the most significant challenges of our digital future. We are looking for ideas from across the globe. We will be reviewing submissions twice a day for at least the next six months, and we will update this website in the coming months as this new donor collaboration evolves. Thank you!