Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 9, 2013

Benetech is very fortunate to have Robin Seaman, our accomplished Director of Content Acquisition, as the driving force behind our expanding partnerships with the publishing community. Developing and implementing growth opportunities with new digital partners require skill, expertise, and collaboration.

Spain 151

Spain Language America Law 151

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

He is now the Executive Director of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group , which earlier this year spun off from Benetech to become its own independent organization. Patrick provided me with a profound analysis of the human rights sector that formed the basis for what would turn into the Martus initiative.

Burma 168

Burma Analysis Guatemala Law 168

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

ZeroDivideâ„¢ Board of Directors Position Description ZeroDivide is seeking candidates for its Board of Directors to serve for a three-year term commencing on February 1, 2009. ZeroDivide's Board of Directors has 15 members. We're seeking new board members. A Board term is three years, renewable once.

San Francisco 100

San Francisco California Philanthropy Director 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 4, 2011

There was much excitement and interest in recruiting Stephen Pierson, the American Statistical Association’s Director of Science Policy, to consider such an initiative. In general the local chapter members were very excited about, and more than a little envious of, our work and the potential it has to impact human rights research.

Chapter 174

Chapter Local San Francisco Guatemala 174

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 6, 2010

Raja is a seasoned business executive with senior level experience in multinationals (Coca-Cola, B&W/BAT, BOC Group, Societe Generale) in Europe, Asia and in multiple Middle East/North African countries (MENA), as an entrepreneur and as Managing Director of one of the oldest retail groups in the MENA region.

SWF 140

SWF Group Asia Europe 140

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 16, 2011

Her love of reading led to a position on the board of directors of Bookshare, an organization making accessible books and periodicals for readers with vision disabilities. I was especially surprised at the prominence Bookshare had in Melanie's life, by what her family chose to share with the newspaper.

News 133

News Student Model Roles 133

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 25, 2007

SEEING BEYOND SALON: An evening of social-networking, creativity & big-picture thinking Thurs, May 17, 111 Minna Gallery | $10 | for tickets go to: www.seeingbeyondsight.org/salon Only $5 in advance with special coupon for Lighthouse for the Blind friends (use coupon: “lighthouse” AFTER entering credit card info) [5:30pm] Social networking with (..)

Info 100

Info Music Arts Social Network 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 24, 2008

N.Krishnaswamy, Seminar Coordinator, Members of the Steering Committee N.Ravi, Editor, The Hindu, Chennai S.Ramakrishnan, Director-General, C-DAC, Pune James Fruchterman, CEO, Bookshare, USA Geeta Dharmarajan, Exec. Director, Katha, New Delhi N.Krishnaswamy IPS (Retd), Chairman, Vidya Vrikshah

India 100

India National Sponsor Director 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 24, 2018

Gerry served on Benetech’s board of directors for 29 years, always there for advice and tackling the next big opportunity. That was how the organization we now know of as Benetech was created and how I became a social entrepreneur (this was more than a decade before we had heard the term).

Mentoring 167

Mentoring Copyright Law Photography 167

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 19, 2013

On behalf of the Benetech team, including our Board of Directors, I’m delighted to welcome you to our new website and formally introduce our newest program area: Benetech Labs ! We''ve just launched Benetech''s new website. This is my Welcome post that originally appeared on the new Benetech Blog.

Site 158

Site Accessibility Press Ideas 158

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 10, 2011

The centerpiece of our Benetech board of directors meeting this week was the Benetech Human Rights Program. Each of our quarterly meetings tends to focus on big strategic issues facing Benetech. Last quarter Betsy Beaumon presented the future of our Literacy program including Bookshare.

Literacy 150

Literacy Disaster Phone Press 150

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 24, 2009

I remember sitting in a small group with the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency. I joined the ExComm, which was the student programming committee, which worked with the actual Board of Directors to chart the course for the Y during the year. Most of all, the Caltech Y was my starting point for social involvement.

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Student Activities Active Activism 104

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 9, 2009

While I was at the ATIA conference in Florida, our Director of Marketing was in Washington DC at another conference. We recently obtained the ability to directly download books from the national accessible textbook repository for those states who appoint us to do that for the disabled students of their state.

Kenya 100

Kenya Florida DC Washington 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 17, 2010

The files were discovered by Human Rights Watch at the abandoned headquarters of Habré’s security force, the Documentation and Security Directorate (DDS). The HRDAG analysis shows that former Chadian president Hissène Habré was well informed of the hundreds of prison deaths that occurred during his regime.

Chad 124

Chad Guatemala Data Liberia 124

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 23, 2007

Ann Harrison, our Communications Director, just pulled together a great photo essay on our work with the National Police Archive in Guatemala. Bringing Ann on board has been a key part of improving our communications as an organization.

Guatemala 100

Guatemala Photo National Skills 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 15, 2010

One repeating theme came to me during a recent and fascinating meeting with Professor Rebecca Richards-Kortum, the Director of Rice 360, the Institute for Global Health Technologies. The challenges that people bring are rarely technology problems: they are market problems. Rebecca was looking for help with a familiar problem.

Global 178

Global Technology Marketing Kenya 178

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 17, 2010

HRDAG Director Patrick Ball and I met there with a woman who manually records data from the cemeteries—including the N.N.s, The smaller of the two cemeteries in Rio Negro(needed special permission to enter). And then we went to Colombia. Between the airport and Medellín is a town called Rionegro.

Colombia 122

Colombia Statistics Analysis Data 122

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 29, 2006

Thanks to efforts by our Bookshare.org team and our communications director, Ann Harrison, we were delighted to see Matthew's efforts highlighted in an article in his hometown paper, entitled Helping everyone read. One of our terrific volunteers is Matthew Devcich, who chose to do his Eagle Scout project on scanning for Bookshare.org.

Help 100

Help Volunteer Course Director 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 22, 2006

Protecting Guatemala's National Police Historical Archive A Guest Blog By Ann Harrison Benetech Communications Director Since 2003, Benetech's Martus information management software has helped human rights activists create encrypted databases and back up their data remotely to their choice of publicly available servers.

Guatemala 124

Guatemala National Switzerland Camera 124

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Part of the meeting was celebrating the first ever China Hadley director and donor, Mr. Zhang Zhongyan. As we went around the country, we kept running into former Hadley students and teachers. It's clear Hadley has had a great impact on the blindness field in China.

China 100

China Celebrate Student Teach 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 28, 2014

Beyond debating the stimulating topics of major talks—such as Edward Snowden’s appearance by telepresence robot and t he response to it by Rick Ledgett , the Deputy Director of the NSA—I spent much of my time speaking about my favorite topic: technology for social good. Of course, that included getting new ideas for software for social good!

Ideas 223

Ideas Kenya Brain Software 223

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 23, 2008

He left us a few years ago to go back to his original profession of psychology, and became a project director of a counseling agency. He was our main and only tech support staffer for the early years of Bookshare.org. Peter's impact on the field of access technology for the blind was major.

Journal 100

Journal Photo Picture Tech 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 10, 2014

First we identified the titles we wanted to add—all requested by Bookshare non-student members, including some of the best science books of 2013 as reported by NPR’s Science Friday show.

Life 147

Life Gift eBook France 147

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 15, 2009

LINKS: [link] [link] [link] SONAL SHAH : Sonal Shah, Former head of global development initiatives for Google.org, joined the Obama Administration in April as the first director of the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, a new office.

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San Francisco Virginia Government DC 129

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 29, 2010

HRP director Dr. Patrick Ball developed a plan to collect a multi-stage random sample of the documents and secure the sample data with Benetech's Martus information management tool for careful examination.

Guatemala 145

Guatemala Statistics National Analysis 145

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 19, 2009

There was much food for thought, as our management team develops our plan further for presentation and discussion with our board of directors. We heard about how much our commitment to transparency was valued, among other aspects of our culture. And, our team is quite interested in seeing what we do with their input (so am I)!

Volunteer 100

Volunteer Companies Survey Facilitation 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 18, 2008

John Crossman (Benetech's Director of Engineering) and I attended an interesting and exciting Google Open Source talk on AxsJAX at Google this week, by Charles Chen (the developer of FireVox) and T.V. Raman (the developer of EMACSpeaks). They are tackling the challenge of making the richer Web more accessible.

Google 100

Google gMail Open Source Application 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 25, 2014

Having just heard the new director of MIT’s Media Lab, Joi Ito , present the Labs’ latest approach to innovation—“Deploy or Die”—I was inspired to answer the question. asked Chris Anderson, head of TED, at the closing session of this year’s conference. billion poorest people?”

Paraguay 144

Paraguay Problem Application Global 144

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 3, 2008

“Social enterprise is a key part of the Scottish government's social strategy,” says Ruth Parsons, Director of the Public Sector (Scottish government). There are over 400 attendees from twenty-five countries, all here to talk about how to use business to accomplish social outcomes. And Scotland is a logical place for such an event.

San Francisco 100

San Francisco Social Government Conference 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 18, 2008

The turnout for the seminar was great: I was able to meet key people from C-DAC, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, including the Director General, Ramakrishnan. I enjoyed giving my 20 minute talk on Bookshare.org and building a global library.

India 100

India Language Library Student 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 8, 2005

Patrick Ball, our Director of Human Rights Programs, will be awarded one of EFF's Pioneer Awards next week. Awesome announcement! Since Patrick is busy working with the Truth Commission in East Timor, I think they are trying to connect him to the ceremony over the Internet!

Timor 100

Timor Award Internet Director 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 12, 2009

The presentation in Bayamon was attended by Igri Enriquez, director of the Regional Library for the Blind and Physically Impaired. Within these regions there are nine Service Centers for Special Education that train and service teachers and students.

Puerto Rico 100

Puerto Rico United States Student Library 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 18, 2006

Benetech staff Tamy Guberek, Romesh Silva and Daniel Guzmán are currently in Guatemala City helping the Ombudsman's Office to refine and implement a series of statistical pilot studies conceived by Benetech's Human Rights Program Director Patrick Ball.

Guatemala 100

Guatemala Statistics National Sample 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 16, 2005

Another great piece of news is that Janice Carter has joined Benetech as our Director of Literacy Programs, and is now general manager of Bookshare.org. We are delivering more and more books that meet the literacy needs of our users, by providing the latest bestsellers, textbooks and daily newspapers into accessible form.

Literacy 100

Literacy Florida Library Fun 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

I was surprised that the Director General of WIPO, Francis Gurry, actually presided over the half-day formal meeting: the effort was obviously getting priority from WIPO. I was in the final group of a three disability advocates and two publisher representatives who wrapped up at 1 am! There was one big area of consensus.

Accessibility 247

Accessibility License Copyright Library 247

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 5, 2004

Benetech's Director of Human Rights Programs Patrick Ball contributed a chapter to a recently published volume by the Society for Applied Anthropology entitled Human Rights: The Scholar as Activist.

Chapter 100

Chapter Statistics Technique Reflection 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 5, 2008

We met with the special education directors and curriculum chiefs of each state. The FSM, which is made up of four distinct island states (Kosrae, Pohnpei, Chuuk and Yap) sent teams from each of their states as well as the national government.

Guam 100

Guam Micronesia South Korea Marshall Islands 100