Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 31, 2007

The big celebration was also in the Sheldonian: the 2007 Awards for Social Entrepreneurship. For social entrepreneurs (except Jeff) this is the Academy Awards, and the smiles were beaming. I picked Dan Viederman of Verite out as a good example. And it was exciting!

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 4, 2014

This keeps us focused on projects that offer the greatest social impact for the resources invested. Benetech Labs is where the Benetech team and our social impact partners incubate new software-for-good applications. Benetech regularly (as in, more often than weekly) gets asked to build new products that make social impact.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 23, 2007

The event here in Zurich is the Schwab Social Entrepreneur Summit, where roughly a hundred social entrepreneurs get together with global leaders to advance the movement. Sunday was a day of content aimed just at the social entrepreneurs. We discussed leadership, recruiting and succession, among other topics.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 16, 2014

My personal goal is to channel the aspirations of the technology community to do more social good. More and more of my time is spent around both raising money and raising awareness of how much more could be done with technology to increase social impact. To do so, we definitely need your help. Martus Desktop 4.5 and Mobile Martus 1.2

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 13, 2016

He’s a geek (former Microsoft Research guy) who is making the case that technology doesn’t make the kind of social impact it claims to deliver. For example, I extracted many insights about the international development field reading books like Easterly’s Tyranny of Experts or Maren’s Road to Hell.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 14, 2013

In this two-part series I explore the concept of “Technology for All” and Benetech’s commitment to both ensuring that the technology required to meet a social need is developed and that it reaches far beyond the richest 10 percent of people who can most afford it. You can read Part 1, here. So, yes, I do feel optimistic.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 10, 2006

His insights about technology in the social sector have been especially valuable. Jonathan has just published a new book: The Dynamics of Technology for Social Change. IT in the social sector is exploding, and yet many projects are not as successful as they could be.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 10, 2013

This post originally appeared as part of an online debate about How Big Data Can Have a Social Impact, which the Harvard Business Review Blog Network hosted jointly with the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. But can Big Data also create positive social change? Big Data is all the rage in Silicon Valley.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 21, 2012

Benetech is a tech social enterprise. When we do something that creates entry level jobs in quantity, we reach out to social enterprise partners who specialize in job creation and training. We call this our social enterprise supply chain. We really love this approach, which we think of making our money work twice.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 17, 2013

Martín Burt is one of the greatest social entrepreneurs I’ve had the pleasure of knowing for many years. I found it incredible that almost no one in the social entrepreneurial field knew about this and decided a blog post was in order! Fundación Paraguaya was the country’s first microfinance program and first development NGO.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 28, 2014

A passionate technology-for-good advocate, Gerardo has made major contributions to Benetech’s social mission since he joined us over four years ago. He oversaw the development of numerous products and services that allow us to drive social empowerment through technology across all our programs.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 3, 2011

But, we can approach human behavior change from a social perspective. Zerofootprint shows what you can do with real data to influence meaningful social change. Zerofootprint is an exciting social enterprise, and one I hope to see gain expanded adoption.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 13, 2010

The social sector is having to evolve in this changing world. Social services that were innovative thirty years ago now need to be rebuilt to better meet the needs of today. Social services that were innovative thirty years ago now need to be rebuilt to better meet the needs of today.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 17, 2014

As a different kind of Silicon Valley tech company—a nonprofit with a pure focus on social good—our goal is to see that the best of technology gets applied to social needs left unaddressed by for-profit businesses. Making content accessible for the blind has been a traditional example of fair use.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 13, 2014

Yet, when humanitarian and social justice workers venture into the developing world to gather sensitive information, elementary privacy protections are often neglected. Take for example a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) rights-focused organization with which we work.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 13, 2011

I just spent a couple of days in Vancouver with the team at the Public Knowledge Project , a terrific example of an open source social enterprise. It was great to see another social enterprise successfully meeting the needs of a community! Their largest project is Open Journal Systems, software for running a scholarly journal.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 19, 2013

From then on she’s been on a roll, developing initiatives that leverage the direct link between environmental restoration, economic revitalization and social progress. I look forward to seeing her continue to innovate with new enterprises that simultaneously develop viable businesses and generate environmental and social good.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 17, 2009

It never ceases to amaze me: the cool social entrepreneurs that I get to meet all the time, coming up with mind-blowing innovative ways to accomplish social good. As a successful example of how to build a scalable approach to a chronic issue, I noticed that PWX was highlighted in the recent Irvine Foundation convergence report.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 15, 2012

As a result, people with disabilities were left behind, facing insurmountable barriers to opportunities in education, employment, and social inclusion. It is the nature of technology to realize immense economies when scale is achieved, but it is the Power of We that drives scale and makes success possible for ultimate social impact.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 20, 2010

Benetech's recommendation is to apply intellectual property to unmet social needs, by encouraging WEF stakeholders to think beyond solely profitable applications. Corporate leaders encouraging the pro bono or low bono use of their IP to social needs that are outside the corporation's markets. *

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 30, 2010

Today was an example of this. Since I’ve been working on IP policy and licensing on Bookshare, I was quite interested and had ideas of how to work with companies to apply their IP to social needs. I also got to talk to Pablos because he knew Brian, and ask about ideas that might be worth licensing for social purposes.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 17, 2015

Access to information and knowledge is a basic human right and a necessary first step towards personal, economic, and social development. It is the primary successful example of the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization Development Agenda, and will lay the groundwork for more advances in the Development Agenda. ·

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 11, 2013

Creating the World’s Largest Collection of Accessible Arabic eBooks Access to knowledge is the critical first step on the path to economic, educational, and social development. There’s so much more we could do to advance the path towards full digital inclusion of the world’s people with print disabilities.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 7, 2013

We’re grateful to our socially responsible publishing partners who give us world rights to their titles, even though they are not required to do so under international copyright law. For example, in developing countries, we aim to help our members pursue educational and employment opportunities.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 16, 2011

For example, all residents with the qualifying disabilities in Australia, Denmark and Qatar, to pick just three examples, now have free access to Bookshare thanks to our joint efforts with local and national disability groups in these countries. .

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 9, 2009

We have social enterprises all over the world doing book proofreading for Bookshare. Daproim is an example of a cool social enteprise. Tags: social enterprise Daproim Harkin Bookshare Kenya. from the number one disability advocate in the Senate was a thrill! But, it's not just in Washington DC.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 1, 2012

Gather a group of social entrepreneurs to brainstorm ideas to improve employment opportunities for people with disabilities, and you will harvest an array of innovative solutions. Recently, I had the pleasure to host Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) for exactly such a meeting of minds with ten fellow social entrepreneurs.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 2, 2007

It was very interesting, hearing a blend of corporate positioning from Microsoft and Google combined with real interest in social issues. Of course, Sally Osberg kept the social side of the equation by providing real examples of social entrepreneurs making impacts (while working with corporations).

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 27, 2010

I’m joining many other social entrepreneurs on our journey to Davos, home of the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum. The Schwab Foundation arranges for the social entrepreneurs to stay in the Schatzalp mountain hotel. My first event was the orientation for new Schwab social entrepreneurs.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 31, 2008

One of the most exciting literacy social enterprises that I've run into is PlanetRead. Another example of scale, South Asian style! I came away from my day-trip to Pondicherry impressed yet again with Indian social enterprise. These groups are even more ambitious and disciplined than the American social enterprises I run into.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 9, 2018

Literacy and access to knowledge underpins just about every social good, from education, to economic development, to health, to women’s empowerment, democracy and respect for human rights. My point is that copyright exceptions enable the ebook to deliver far more social benefit than would be practical in an earlier era.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 8, 2013

Our primary goal is to ensure that people with disabilities get equal access to the books and content they need for education, employment, leisure and social inclusion. It sure would create more demand for Bookshare in the future, but our primary goal is not to sustain Bookshare, although we will as long as Bookshare is needed.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 14, 2009

As the chair of the Social Enterprise Alliance, I have the opportunity to address the annual Summit. I had a blast in New Orleans revving up the crowd about this exciting time for the Social Enterprise Alliance and the movement. Here's the text of my speech: [long post alert] Social Enterprise: Not Business as Usual!

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

Commercialization is a proxy for societal impact: if it sells, it's a pretty good indicator of social value. My favorite example is in the pharma area. So, a key action to improve this market failure problem is to be open to licensing technology to social entrepreneurs. However, there is a problem with this: market failure.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 14, 2010

Most people who are quads have partial use of their limbs, for example, little use of their legs but partial use of their arms. Tags: quadriplegic exercycles exercise Dan Fruchterman ALF Thesing Social innovation quadriplegia. They are going to need access to exercise equipment they can use independently to ensure their long term help.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 3, 2016

We see the new recommended language as replacing antique and obsolete language (“reading disability from organic dysfunction” is one example) with language that describes functionally someone with a disability that gets in the way of reading print. Here are the three changes of note: Clarifying the definition of a disability that qualifies.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 12, 2008

We're huge O'Reilly fans: Tim has always been socially oriented and more than four years ago gave Bookshare.org a license to distribute all of his books to disabled people around the world. So, Tim leads by example. The creative brains in the Valley have a lot to offer when they are motivated.

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