Today sees Gnomedex attendees heading home and posting re-caps of event highlights. This morning, my buddy Dave Delaney summed up his Gnomedex experience by quoting Beth Kanter:

“Use technology for good and it will make you feel good.”

In case you missed it, Beth enlisted the audience at Gnomedex to demonstrate the power of social networking for non-profits by raising more than $2,500 in 90 minutes to send a Cambodian woman to university. Beth has illustrated on numerous occasions how individuals can make a difference using the reach of their social networks.

I am heartened to see more and more people using technology, specifically social networking and social media, to give. But giving is not confined to money, it can be help, expertise, advice or anything else that provides value to the recipient.

And so, I was excited to receive an invitation to preview Akoha this Thursday at an event here in Montreal. Co-founders Austin Hill and Alex Eberts started Akoha last year after attending the TED conference in Monterey, CA where the theme was “Ideas Big Enough to Change The World”. After co-founding Zero-Knowledge Systems (now Radialpoint), they’ve teamed up again to make a difference by pairing gift economies with the social nature of gaming.

Working in stealth mode with a small team for the better part of a year, Akoha received $1.9 million in angel funding last April and were named one of Canada’s 20 hottest innovative companies. Despite having a Facebook fan page and the the absolute BEST job descriptions, (like these for a Community Gardener and a Professional Vandal) complete with entertaining videos, Akoha has created buzz, yet very little is publicly known about how they intend to execute their plan to change the world.

Tara Hunt (a.k.a. @missrogue), co-founder of Citizen Agency and author of the forthcoming book “The Whuffie Factor”, interviewed Austin Hill about Akoha last December. In his own words,

“Akoha is based off Aboriginal gift economies and it’s a pay it foward giving game whereby you earn points based off how well you give to other people. So aside from the functional, this is a social network.”

The rest of the 6 minute interview is here:

I am looking forward to meeting Austin Hill and the rest of the Akoha team on Thursday evening to discover what will hopefully be a new way to use technology to truly make a difference in people’s lives.

One thing I’m interested to discover is if Akoha has plans for a businesses application. Many companies have corporate giving programs, but think of the difference an enterprise-sized solution could make by simply making it fun for their network of employees to give. I wonder if Akoha will be the one to make giving part of the social culture of work. Wouldn’t that be an amazing way to change the world?

Here are some more thoughts on that:

I’d love to hear what role you think businesses who are using social networking for marketing will play in the gift economy.