Ideablob.com, an online entrepreneurial contest sponsored by the small business credit card company Advanta Bank Corporation, awarded Naomi Bar-Yam '79, Ph.D. '97 $10,000 on Feb. 13. The money will go towards funding the Mothers' Milk Bank of New England, which allows women to share their breast milk with others who cannot nurse. Bar-Yam formed a committee of nurses, midwives and other experts to help flesh out her idea. They then posted a summary on ideablob.com, on which users post their business ideas to receive suggestions and votes of support from other users. Each month, Advanta awards $10,000 to implement the business plan with the most votes. Bar-Yam's plan won the January contest.

Kassar described the event as "so Brandeis: an intersection of do-good and social causes, with a lot of alumni there." Natan Lempert '09, founder and president of the two-month old Brandeis IT and Entrepreneurial club said he received a phone call Feb. 8 from Daniel Stern '07, an Advanta marketing specialist, asking Lempert to organize the award ceremony for less than a week later.

Bar-Yam explained her interest in milk banks after donating her own breast milk to "another baby, who was quite sick, whose mother wasn't nursing her." Later, while researching other reasons for women to share nursing, she found that there had previously been a milk bank in New England, but that it no longer exists.

Bar-Yam said that "it's semi-embarrassing, truthfully" that the resource is unavailable. She added that "We needed to have a milk bank in New England because it's an important health care institution for premature babies."

"We don't pick out the winner," Kassar emphasized. "The users do." Ideablob is part of Advanta's goal "to come up with new things, new models, new ideas," including those which may be "well out of the domain of what we do regularly" as a credit card corporation.

According to Kassar, "a lot of young people are gravitating towards [the network]," with its egalitarian structure and interactive spirit. "It's just happening virally," he marveled.

The IT and Entrepreneurship Club fulfills ideablob's goals because it combines "the skills and technology that people have in the computer science community with the ideas and entrepreneurship that people have in the business community," said Lempert, an Economics major with an Internet Studies minor.

The intersection between innovation and telecommunication also propelled Bar-Yam's endeavors, as those active in the milk bank movement took to the Internet to vote for Bar-Yam's idea. "The breast-feeding community is very Internet-savvy," Bar-Yam said, explaining her success.

The IT and Entrepreneurship Club received a $1,000 grant from Advanta for its sponsorship of the event. The club is currently unchartered because most of its activities do not require funding. Lempert said he is considering using the money to create a contest similar to Ideablob's, "but geared toward college students." Before that can happen, though, he wants to "find people that would be the pillars of the club."

The contest was run and organized by Advanta's Chief Innovation Officer Ami Kassar '91 and Lempert. The event was held in the Shapiro Campus Center Atrium.

In terms of what's next for Mother's Milk Bank, Bar-Yam's committee is initiating "a lot of education programs both in the medical community and in the health community" and is trying to find a lab to process the milk. "The committee is also continuing to raise funds, because, as Bar-Yam said, "$10,000 is great, but it won't be quite enough to get us off the ground.