A challenger to the Webbies?

Image by jdlasica via Flickr

The immensely influential Arianna Huffington has decided to launch her own version of the 12 year old Webbys Awards (which are kindof like the web’s answer to the Oscars, complete with star-studded red carpet).

The HuffPost Game Changers awards [are] to honor and celebrate 100 people who are using new media to reshape their fields and change the world.

Note the use of ‘world’. Unfortunately and predictably it’s extremely likely that, like the Webby awards, they’re unlikely to feature many non-Americans in the eventual nominations.

But at least they’re free to enter, you just add a comment to her post. So these are the ones which sprung off the top of my head (I know I’ve forgotten some) and I’d encourage readers to go there, add some more and get some US attention (and possible support) for some amazing non-American ‘game-changers’.

• The Iranian blog/twit-osphere – it seems a bit churlish to single out one person, although this may make it harder to pick.
• MySociety – the UK geeks who, before anyone else in the world (yep!), have been liberating data from government, mashing it up and making it available to the public. Their work has inspired gov geeks around the world, including the US.
• Ushahidi – an amazing African work, set up to monitor Kenyan post-election violence and now monitoring elections around the world (more).
• Global Voices – an amazing site which brings together bloggers from every corner of the globe.
• Committee Addiopizzo – young Sicilians using the web to fight the paying of ‘pizzo’ (extortion) to the mafia (more)

And some Americans:

• Samasource – who team with tekkies in the third world doing socially responsible outsourcing using the rapidly expanding cell phone networks (more on this here)