American Express recently unveiled the top 25 projects selected as semi-finalists for Members Project, the online initiative that invites cardmembers and the public in general to come together and submit, discuss and vote for projects to make a positive impact on the world, which American Express will fund with $2.5 million.

Since July, people from across the country and the Members Project Advisory Panel helped choose the top 25 projects from the more than 1,000 that were submitted. In less than 5 days (this round of voting ends 9/29), cardmembers will determine which projects advance to the top five.

Over the past month, Cardmembers came together to share their ideas that may help shape our future. Photos and videos were used to encourage project submissions on the site and tools were available to help promote projects and spread the word, including online badges, widgets and banners to post on sites like Facebook and MySpace.

Participants rallied their own personal networks to get behind the projects that mean the most to them and the blog buzz and social community posts and discussions grew week after week, encouraging project nominations. Whether a cardmember or not, everyone was invited to participate by commenting on and nominating their favorite projects online.

(This post continues past the break; click "Read More" to continue)

Like Tony Bennett, I once left (a bit of) my heart in San Francisco.  That was in 2004, at Eradicating Poverty Through Profit, the first major conference to discuss market-based approaches to poverty alleviation – the "bottom of the pyramid" idea.  Now, nearly four years later, I am again heading west for a conference – one with the same sort of potential to change the way we think; this time, about social capital.

The aptly-named Social Capital Markets conference is the brainchild of Kevin Jones, a participant in that 2004 conference and a longtime NextBillion ally.  For three days next month, a group of investors, venture capitalists, businesspeople, practitioners and academics will gather in San Francisco to think about how and when to deploy social capital.  Acumen Fund – my current employer – and World Resources Institute – my previous one – will both be in the room.  And I'm proud to announce that NextBillion.net – co-managed by those two organizations – will be live-blogging the event.

Social Capital Markets – SoCap08 for short – will be held October 13 to 15.  I'll post a conference preview about a week prior; during the event, I'll report from plenary sessions and as many panels as possible.  Since it's impossible for me to be everywhere at once, I've recruited a stable of top-notch guest bloggers to contribute to NextBillion from the event as well:

• Jocelyn Wyatt, IDEO
• Graham Macmillan, VisionSpring
• David Auerbach, Endeavor
• Mark Beckford, Disruptive Leadership

Staff Writer David Lehr will be at SoCap08; more guest bloggers will be confirmed in the coming week.  If you're planning to be at the event and want to meet up, let me know (comments below) - I'd love to hear your feedback on NextBillion.net and the development-through-enterprise sector as a whole.