Nominations Open for Nation’s Top Honor in Public Interest Computing

Tides Pizzigati Prize will award $10,000 to an open source software developer whose work is helping nonprofit activists succeed.

September 16, 2012 – Nominations have now opened for the seventh annual Antonio Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest, the nation’s highest honor for software developers working with nonprofits to help advance innovative social change.

Tides is now accepting nominations for this year’s $10,000 prize through December 1st. The 2013 winner will be announced in April at the Nonprofit Technology Network annual conference in Minneapolis.

The Pizzigati Prize honors talented and creative individuals who develop open source software products that demonstrate impressive value to the nonprofit sector. Tides welcomes nominations from both developers and the nonprofits who work with them.

The most recent Pizzigati Prize winner, Nathan Freitas, leads the Guardian Project, a team of software developers working on new mobile technology programs that can help activists “coordinate, protest, and campaign” more efficiently and effectively, no matter where they may be on the planet. His flagship “Secure Smart Cam” app enables human rights defenders to safely capture and distribute human rights digital media.

The 2011 Pizzigati Prize winner, Ken Banks, has created software that turns even the simplest mobile phones into grassroots organizing tools for everything from mobilizing young voters to thwarting thieving commodity traders.

“Software developers like these are making an enormous difference,” notes Tides CEO Melissa Bradley. “The Pizzigati Prize aims to salute their contribution — and encourage programmers to engage their talents in the ongoing struggle for social change.”

The Pizzigati Prize also honors the brief life of Tony Pizzigati, an early advocate of open source computing. Born in 1971, Tony spent his college years at MIT, where he worked at the world-famous MIT Media Lab. Tony, an early champion of open-source computing, died in 1995, in an auto accident on his way to work in Silicon Valley.

Full details on the Tides Pizzigati Prize, the largest annual award in public interest computing, appear online at www.pizzigatiprize.org.