Over at OpenLeft Chris Bowers has announced the winners of the First Annual BlogPAC Progressive Entrepreneurs Contest.  Here is how he summarizes what they’ve been doing:

“Five weeks ago, BlogPac put out a call to “find the five best new, grassroots progressive infrastructure projects in America, and provide those projects with the money, exposure, and connections necessary to get off the ground.” Originally, I had scheduled the announcement of the winners for the contest on Thursday, August 2nd. However, due to the sheer volume of submissions, over 100, and to the high quality of many of those submissions, it took us a much longer time to reach a decision than I had originally envisioned.”

This has been an amazing endeavor and a lot of great applications went through and the winners are very deserving.

However, the reason I’m posting the link to Bowers’ post is to get you all to go over and look at the winners’ project descriptions but I also wanted to highlight one of the winners.

“The Candidate Source internet video project, submitted by Brian Amos on behalf of CandidateSource.com. Candidate Source is a project to transcribe and catalog political content found on video sharing sites like YouTube, including stump speeches, debates, and interviews.  It will be launched on September 1st, and create a free, large, fully searchable database of political video featuring speeches and interviews with both Democratic and Republican candidates. Anyone will be able to search for video by the candidates who appear in it, topics discussed, or quotes contained in it.  Once launched, progressive activists will be able to find particularly eloquent or explanatory speeches from her or his favorite candidates, and also to check for inconsistency in opposing candidates. Further, bloggers, mainstream media, or even an average citizen will be able to easily compare candidate stances on a certain issue. This project will help further engage people-powered activism in American politics.

Brian Amos is the brother of a good friend of mine from Drake and I’m really excited that this project is coming to fruition and hopefully going to take off.

Brian’s brother first introduced me to the proposal last spring and I told him it was a great idea and to go forward with it.  I haven’t heard from him much over the summer, as the brothers Amos have been on a student-run film tour across the country this summer called Student Films Across America.  Hopefully, as classes start up I’ll be able to offer you some more information about CandidateSource.com and hopefully will be able to invite the brothers to come to Bleeding Heartland and talk about the project.

As I learn more about the project I will make sure to fill you in.  But keep your eyes on the site–it should hopefully uncover another “macaca moment” for the Republican candidates.