Google’s Project 10^100

A friend put me on to a project being sponsored by Google – Project 10^100 (ten to the hundredth).  The idea is to gather ideas for people helping people and select 5 to provide $10 million of funding – simple math puts makes that $2 million per project, give or take.  I’ve set up a conversation at Global MindShift for people to discuss and refine their ideas for submission.  The entry deadline is October 20, 2008.

A few things I thought were noteworthy …

There isn’t a category for governance.  My guess … it would be spending money to change a brick wall.  This is about leveraging the great ideas people have for helping people … why put politics in the way.

There isn’t a category for religion and there is an emphasis on respecting other cultures.  To me this means were getting down to people connecting with people with no strings attached. 

With potentially such little seed money availabe to get the selected projects rolling this seems to be a call to look for the simple ideas that make a big difference and to leverage an abundant but overlooked resource at our disposal – human ingenuity and energy.  Technology has its benefits but it’s limitations as well.

I can see a lot more than five projects being started.  The process of merely thinking of projects will energize a great many people, especially those who have had something on the backburner.  Google has put a system in place to connect organizations with submitters if their idea hasn’t been selected.  I can imagine there will be a lot more coming out of that than first thought.