Play the Planet (PtP) speaks differently to the two primary groups it engages. On the one hand, PtP is a set of productivity enhancing and organizational tools designed for local governments, non profit groups, and concerned citizens. All of the above can use the platform to create a project inside a Holon (note: In the US, a "Holon" is equal to a county, but that will obviously not hold true everywhere, and the site is designed to solve locally but scale globally).
In any case, any of the above can log in and use the system to get involved in, and stay connected with ongoing initiatives in their local communities.
From a productivity and organizational standpoint, what you'll find here is a full featured social networking community geared toward local area problem solving and activism, with ties to the major mainstream social networks (FaceBook and Twitter). Additionally, each group has access to an events calendar, a group based chat room, forums, shared document tools for online collaboration, private messaging, and more!
Users who come to the site may opt to get either a free account or a paid version, and the differences between the two are these: Free users may fully utilize the existing system, but are not able to expand or build onto the system, while paid users may extend and expand the system by creating new groups and projects in their local communities (or any other group they opt to join--although the suite is designed for people working locally, the natural progression of that is such that as problems begin to get solved locally, a group's natural tendency will be to reach out beyond its immediate geographic area to lend a hand elsewhere, and we aim to make it easy to do just that!
This, however, is merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Premium (paid) users, having the ability to establish new network structures (groups and projects) can thus make their own private and semi private groups. Example: If you are a member of the Salvation Army of (Your County), you could sign up for a premium account and create a Salvation Army group for your county (Holon). Beneath that, you may want to set up a board of directors group, a warehouse staffer's group, and a store clerk's group that caters to JUST the employees of the Salvation Army stores in your given area. Each of these would have memberships controlled by you, and each would have their own events calendar, forums, chat rooms, and the like. So if you had a meeting that only applied to the warehouse people, you could put it on the warehouse group's calendar, whereas if you had a meeting that applied to all Salvation Army volunteers, you could put that on the main (top level) Salvation Army calendar so that everyone could see.
Each group can (but is not required to) have its own blog, and doing so unlocks yet more features (the ability to run local fund raisers or set up an eCommerce store locally, for example).
And even this is only the tip of the iceberg, because the real magic is this.
The "other group" I mentioned in the first paragraph? Gamers. The entire system is set up very like a game (Holons = Factions, Projects = Alliances), and our goal is to help non profits engage the demographic that they have historically had almost zero success at engaging. Namely, the 18-35 year old age group.
How?
By turning the act of saving the world into a game!
We have mechanisms in place that will allow Group Moderators (on their own or with our help) to create "Quests." Using gaming language, but making quest fulfillment take place in the real, physical world, we begin to blur the lines between the game world and the real. Believe it or not, this is not a new concept!
So...summary: What is it? One part productivity suite, one part game.
Who needs it? Non profits, Socially conscious business owners, local governments
Why? Because it is a personal and group empowerment tool that connects groups striving to solve social problems in a wholly new way. It fosters and enables cross pollination between different groups who may have similar goals, and it engages a heretofore disengaged demographic, and honestly, if you're in the Saving The World business, then you need all hands on deck!
A more detailed presentation (run time 30 minutes) can be found here:
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