Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 30, 2010

Every table conversation brings a new perspective and a new idea: whether it’s new knowledge, a great contact or a new extension to the idea under discussion. But, the Schwab’s made the right call to bring us into the discussion ten years ago. And, everybody is working on something and usually is interested in several issues.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 29, 2009

They often make joint discussion hard. It's taking advantage of technology to make a more powerful discussion that I hope will be more productive and informative compared to the old, asynchronous comment mechanism. The systems for participating in government have been long established and formalized.

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Comment DC Government Policy 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 4, 2011

The audience was a diverse group of statisticians, and the Q&A featured lively discussion. For details on how we arrived at these answers, you can find a copy of my presentation on the SFASA webpage.

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Chapter Local San Francisco Guatemala 174

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 15, 2011

Our discussion of these projects and new ideas was exciting: the barriers to implementing new ideas with technology keep getting smaller. Given the election violence of a few years ago, this is a major area of work in Kenya to help prevent a re-occurrence. They've also done a similar project in Tanzania and Uganda.

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Africa Tanzania Kenya Ghana 151

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 8, 2009

seems to be mostly passively supporting killing the treaty but putting off discussion of it, rather than explicitly speaking against it. The treaty is still a live topic and will be discussed at the next WIPO meeting, which is a victory for the advocates. In the end, the conclusion was more favorable.

Copyright 100

Copyright Paraguay Ecuador Brazil 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 9, 2014

She noted that each year the Foundation gathers government policymakers from its three target regions (West Africa, East Africa, and India) to discuss best practices in cost-effective interventions in education.

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Education Philanthropy Africa Foundation 164

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 19, 2009

We're doing the planning by starting with our team: we did an all-company survey and then yesterday we did a two hour meeting to go over the survey results and discuss them. There was much food for thought, as our management team develops our plan further for presentation and discussion with our board of directors.

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Volunteer Companies Survey Facilitation 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 21, 2010

This is the international forum for discussing copyright issues, and it is the body considering the Treaty for the Visually Impaired (TVI). I'm here in Geneva for the 20th Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights meeting.

Copyright 100

Copyright Paraguay Ecuador Brazil 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 30, 2009

There were people already doing cool stuff, like InSTEDD and some great work around mashups of humanitarian data in Afghanistan, as well as folks discussing lauching cool new social enterprises (but we can't talk about them yet). My small contribution to the discussion was (of course) on accessibility.

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Afghanistan Michigan Amazon Mashup 133

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 16, 2013

Policymakers now recognize the quality and impact of our work, and our expertise is often tapped, to great success, in legislative and policy discussions of crucial topics in education, technology, human rights, diplomacy (including treaties), and innovation.

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Advocacy Change Literacy DC 176

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

I've tried them, and I have friends (and kids) that have been totally sucked into them. They punch a bunch of psychological tickets for humans: the game designers know what they're doing.

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Game Roles Virtual Skills 150

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

So please come and join all the discussions. So, put down the remote control -- and shut down the game consoles and set aside a few moments to read with a family member, a friend, a student -- or just by yourself. Then please share your experience on Bookshare's Facebook page. We're also sharing some of our favorite reads on Bookshare.

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Literacy National Sponsor Student 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 14, 2012

The meeting wasn’t only about technical improvements, though attendees were incredibly enthusiastic and detailed in discussing changes that would have greatest impact in their day-to-day and long-term project goals. So if you are reading this and have feedback on how Martus can serve you better, please let us know at info@martus.org.

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Global Group Thailand Burma 157

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 19, 2013

I had the honor of attending CGI 2013 where I announced Benetech’s latest Commitment to Action. I’ve just had the chance to reflect on how cool CGI 2013 and some of the ideas I’m still processing!

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Global India Mobile Impact 134

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 18, 2011

Plus, we discussed much more exciting tech that's in the De Novo pipeline, contributing to areas Benetech is very interested in! KoBoToolbox is a toolkit for making it easy to collect survey data on mobile devices (turns out, I later found out we're already proposing to use this to do a survey in Africa).

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Uganda Africa Proposal Survey 124

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 27, 2013

In my contribution to Ron’s book, I discuss the framework that guides us at Benetech, the technology nonprofit I lead. I hope this discussion helps other social enterprises examine and develop their own frameworks.

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Develop Social Library eBook 144

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 21, 2009

Enjoyed Deb Jospin and Shirley Sagawa discussing the Charismatic Organization, their recent book. Posted the best 30 or so on Flickr : got some great ones of Steve Wright of the Salesforce Foundation. I enjoyed some of the breakout sessions, although the number of concurrent sessions (often 8 at one time) made it hard to pick.

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Foundation Facebook Flickr Course 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 13, 2014

I moderated one of the discussion panels at the human rights conference RightsCon Silicon Valley, March 3, 2014 Such confidential information can easily become compromised with the loss, theft, or confiscation of a smartphone or a computer.

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Data Empowerment United States Government 176

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 22, 2010

We discussed ideas about web accessibility as well as how to make physical accessibility information available using GIS (imagine a Yelp for accessibility information for each building). We then moved to the Commerce Department to see a bunch of tech demonstrations, which was followed by a brainstorming session that I particularly enjoyed.

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DC Demonstration Accessibility Policy 168

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 5, 2010

Of all the discussions I heard, the ones on climate change were the most exciting and compelling. His concept was that science and technology was critical to the future of society, and he wanted to build an inclusive international forum of top leaders literally from all over the world to tackle major problems.

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Japan Technology Conservancy Proposal 113

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 30, 2012

Among the meetings and discussions I enjoyed at CASE was a conversation with a group of MBA students interested in helping NGOs that are working to advance the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) individuals.

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Award Lecture Social Student 154

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 20, 2009

IISE is getting ready for their second year and are actively looking for catalysts who want to be role models and discussion partners for the participants, inspiring them to be the force of positive social change in our world. Sabriye and Paul never cease to amaze me with their innovative ideas and high energy.

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International India Social Student 129

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 29, 2007

Author Andrew Wolk, a Senior Lecturer at MIT on Social Entrepreneurship, focused much of his discussion around the concept of how social enterprises were a socially useful response to market failure. He covers some other great social enterprises such as ITNAmerica (a novel approach to senior-focused paratransit) and Kaboom!

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Business Social Lecture Case Study 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 10, 2013

This number was significantly more than the existing estimates that had dominated news and policy discussions. The analysis made news globally and expanded an international conversation. Here big data affected a global policy debate—and will hopefully make a big difference.

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Profit Data SWF Syria 171

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 15, 2013

When we convinced Patrick to move his team to Benetech from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and HRDAG became a full-fledged project of Benetech’s Human Right Program, we discussed a three-to-five year timeline to spin off his own human rights group.

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Analysis Project Open Source Analytics 174

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 20, 2010

I made a suggestion and got invited to Davos to discuss it. We often leave 90% of the planet out of these discussions. The Global Redesign Initiative is one of the core themes of next week's annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. My proposal is that the world's knowledge should work for all of humanity.

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Proposal Government University Switzerland 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 22, 2006

This kind of event showcases what the web can do for people who cannot go to the short number of conferences where these topics are discussed. I'm giving a webcast on World Usability Day 2006 (November 14, 2006) entitled Access to Books for People with Print Disabilities. And of course, accessibility means better access for more people!

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California Accessibility Course Conference 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 14, 2009

We discussed Chafee, especially in the context of the Amazon text-to-speech brouhaha, and the proposed international treaty that was tabled at the WIPO SCCR meeting in Geneva last month. Government, and it talks about being interested in working on addressing the problem and discussing a wide range of solutions including the proposed Treaty.

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Copyright Proposal Audio eBook 104

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 15, 2009

I'm excited, and looming forward to engaging further in discussions with these leaders and doing what I can to help them bring the federal government into this century! In the tech area, Vivek Kundra noted that the annual IT budget of the federal government is $76 billion. Here's some background on these three key White House staffers.

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San Francisco Virginia Government DC 129

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 29, 2010

Just got late-breaking news: the judges just rendered a guilty verdict in the trial I was about to discuss in the following blog post! Will share more details from our team later, but this is a great day for fighting impunity around forced disappearances.

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Guatemala Statistics National Analysis 145

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 28, 2006

This morning's breakfast was a very active discussion with about fifty people from industry, government and NGOs (the nonprofit sector), ably moderated by David Kirkpatrick of Fortume Magazine. Many attendees were CEOs, SVPs and CTOs from their companies, as well as ministers of ICT.

Industry 100

Industry Trend Government Issue 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 2, 2006

Our discussion talked about adding the genes to existing mice that just focused on the pathways that estrogen and Prozac could affect, since these drugs are already approved in humans. Finally, we discussed the difficulty of getting NIH to fund the development of new mouse lines because of the risks involved.

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Denver Model Database Research 104

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 9, 2007

They are: Highly visual content, multimedia, maps User-created content (an increasing phenomena, with a wide variety of accessibility) Disproportionate cost compared to the benefit (we can't ask Flickr photo sharing users to describe a billion photos) We discussed the difference in priorities and costs. This can be incredibly liberating.

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Second Life Avatar Asia Life 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 24, 2011

This weekend just reconfirms that for me: most of these exciting outcomes weren’t anticipated by me: and I’m not even discussing the central topics of the event!! We are strong believers in the power of serendipity: the idea that great things happen when you get together with interesting people that were in no way anticipated!

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Rhode Island Learning Roles Course 145

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 8, 2006

Patrick Ball, our CTO, and I were discussing the Web 2.0 Our volunteer community just keeps scanning in books, and we're happy to announce that Bookshare.org has hit 30,000 books! conference (Patrick has been attending it this week) and Patrick mentioned a nugget he heard from Tim O'Reilly, the conference organizer. Tim said that a Web 2.0

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 19, 2008

The Summit pulled together experts on roughly seventy different topics to discuss the current and future state of major issue areas: areas as varied as water, mining, nanotechnology, governance, economic development, economic meltdown (kidding) and so on. I went to Dubai for the first ever Summit on the Global Agenda.

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United Arab Emirates Oman Los Angeles UAE 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 15, 2007

We'll be talking about the future of the Alliance, bringing in new board members, discussing a new hybrid organizational form (a joint meeting with Aspen Institute) and all the program for the Gathering on how to operate and succeed as a double bottom-line organization.

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Long Beach Miami California Fun 100