It’s spring here in California, and there is a lot blooming at ISIS:

ISIS made it to the second round of the Social Impact Exchange Business Plan Competition. We were one of 14 organizations out of 42 applicants invited to continue, and we have applied for Mezzanine Stage Growth—for organizations that have successful service adoption, demonstrated positive outcomes, and defined strategies for scaling.

Also, the upcoming mHealth conference Mobile Health 2010 on May 24th and 25th at Stanford University is the third of its kind hosted by BJ Fogg. 2010 has a special emphasis on what’s working to change behavior today in the mHealth field, and in my talk, I am looking forward to highlighting our partnerships in this sphere. In preparation for my talk, I realized that ISIS has over 20 mobile health projects under our belt to date! (Other PopTechers involved with the conference include Robert Fabricant, of frog design, one of the mentors for PopTech Fellows, is speaking, and another 2009 PopTech Social Innovation Fellow, Josh Nesbit of FrontlineSMS: Medic, is on the Program Committee.)

ISIS staff will also be attending the 2010 Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup. This is an important meeting for sexual health professionals, because as I’m wont to say; “Only those in the field can manage to make an interesting topic (sex) oh, so boring.” I learned quite a bit from the corporate marketers at the last two meetings about how to engage youth in an authentic and meaningful way – all the more important in our case because we’re not selling commercial products, but lifelong sexual health…

I will be moderating a panel at the Mashup pre-conference on May 24th about “Youth, Health and Social Media Marketing.” Jason Rzepka, PopTech Board Member, will be a keynote speaker at the pre-conference. The panel I’m moderating will feature:

Tom Subak, VP for Online Services, Planned Parenthood Federation of America

Jose Villa, Founder and President, Sensis

Whitney Smith, Founder and CEO, Girls For A Change

Chris Youngblood, Director of New Media, To Write Love on Her Arms

(Use the code “SEXTECH” for 10% off the conference registration.)

I’ll keep you posted on ISIS events, and I look forward to hearing what others in the PopTech community are up to this spring.

Deb Levine is a 2009 PopTech Social Innovation Fellow and leads ISIS, Inc., the organization behind this weekend’s Sex::Tech‘s conference. Our congratulations to Jason on the award and to Deb’s team on the conference success.

As part of our efforts to find and call attention to social innovators in health with youth, at the 2010 Sex::Tech conference we hosted this past weekend, Jason Rzepka, MTV’s Vice President of Public Affairs and PopTech board member, was honored for his work with youth social innovation. Rhodes Klement, Chair of the PopTech board, presented the award.

Rhodes Klement and Jason Rzepka at the Sex::Tech conference in San Francisco.

Jason is responsible for the strategic direction of all of MTV’s “pro-social” campaigns. In this role, he strives to use the network’s superpowers for good, by engaging over 200 million young people with the network’s Peabody-winning “It’s Your (Sex) Life” with the Kaiser Family Foundation to bring awareness to sexual health issues, the Emmy-winning “Choose or Lose” which helped drive the largest youth voter turnouts in U.S. history, and “A Thin Line” – launched in December of 2009 to address the emerging issue of youth digital abuse.

In addition to honoring Jason and others making an impact in the field, ISIS’ third annual Sex::Tech conference brought together leaders in the fields of STD prevention, education, health, government and technology to explore ways the Internet, mobile and new media can improve young people’s access to sexual health information. This year, Sex::Tech featured successes, innovations, technology intensives and expert insights around the intersection of youth, new media and sexual health.

Editor’s note: Deb Levine is a 2009 PopTech Social Innovation Fellow (watch her PopTech talk) working on innovative tech solutions to sex education and disease prevention.

My organization, ISIS, Inc., just launched an awesome contest with Funny Or Die, SayNow, and MTV (special thanks to Jason Rzepka, PopTech Board member who works on MTV’s A Thin Line campaign, for the help).

Say What?!?!? is a contest where youth aged 15-21 call (310) 736-6760 and record the craziest (or most awesome) stuff adults are telling them about sex.

Have teens you know enter – they can win a walk-on part in a Funny Or Die video. (Ask them, they’ll know it’s cool.) They can check it out at saywhatcontest.org.

The short story is that young people want their sex information and education from trusted adults, but because adults are kinda embarrassed about the topic, they may ad lib a bit and not provide accurate, relevant sex information to our youth.

Pass along the video above and the widget below:

Official contest rules at saywhatcontest.org; winners announced February 12th and winning video premieres February 26th in San Francisco.