Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
MAY 3, 2004
Benetech's Dr. Patrick Ball has just been awarded the ACM's 2003 Lawler Award for humanitarian contributions using computer technology. The ACM is the leading organization for computer science professionals. It's exciting to have one of our own honored by the technology community, and for the open source software that Patrick has so passionately advocated for.
Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media
JANUARY 19, 2004
Some might be asking - why did Beth stop blogging for six months? Well, there was the stalker incident - I can't say any more about that. But, more importantly, I been busy, no overwhelmed, with the new addition to our family, a daughter named Sara Botum. She arrived in October, 2003 from Cambodia at age 2.5. Her Cambodian name means "Princess," so we named her Sara which also means princess.
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Michael Stein's Non-profit Technology Blog
DECEMBER 31, 2004
Would you like to be informed whenever there is a new posting to read on this - or any other - site? It easy - if you know how to subscribe via RSS. A study done by Yahoo in October claims that only 12% of internet users know what RSS is, and only 4% are actively using it. But its REALLY easy. So here's the poop. What is RSS? RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
DECEMBER 20, 2004
I had a rewarding time at the WRI Bottom of the Pyramid Conference last week. The basic concept was that business can help the 5 billion people at the bottom of the economic pyramid. My takeaway is something that many people has pointed out: that the cell phone has become an incredible engine of change for the poor. Earlier this year, I remember buying roasted cashews from a woman on the street in Maputo, Mozambique, who had her wares balanced on her head.
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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
DECEMBER 5, 2004
Check out the Bookshare.org Amazon.com Wish List. This contains a list of books we'd like to add to our digital library for people with print disabilities, Bookshare.org. Books donated to Bookshare.org should be tax deductible, since Bookshare.org is operated by Benetech, a qualified tax exempt organization. Give the gift of reading this holiday season!
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
DECEMBER 3, 2004
Technology and Human Rights Talk. My talk this week at Stanford was videoed and placed on the EE380 class website. I covered our Human Rights program, including the Martus Project and the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (which joined Benetech last year). This is based on a talk I gave in Sri Lanka last year at the University of Peradeniya, but with a heavier technology component given the engineering audience.
Nonprofit Technology brings together the best content for nonprofit technical enthusiasts from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
NOVEMBER 23, 2004
Bookshare.org News. Bookshare.org has the ability to move quickly! On Monday morning, the 2004 National Book Award winners in fiction and nonfiction were made live on our Bookshare.org site, providing rapid access to these books to readers with disabilities. Announced in the middle of last week, these two new books are two outstanding accounts of remarkably different histories.
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
NOVEMBER 22, 2004
I am delighted that our Martus Senior Product Manager, Marc Levine, has been chosen as a ZeroDivide Fellow by the Community Technology Foundation of California (CTFC). When I spoke to the first group of ZeroDivide Fellows last year, I realized what a great opportunity this would be for an activist like Marc. It's been hard sitting on this news for a while, but the formal announcement went out while I was traveling.
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
NOVEMBER 19, 2004
I hit a major personal milestone last week: I stepped down from my last executive job in the for-profit high technology sector. I was the founding CEO of RAF Technology, Inc. from 1989 to 1995, and have been the Chief Financial Officer since then. For the last few years, it has been a part-time job as I have had a very strong Controller in Alwynn Lewis.
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
NOVEMBER 16, 2004
The summit last week on digital libraries for the disabled was quite exciting. It was fascinating to meet with major players from the different libraries around the world and talk about how to build the global digital library. We are working together to refine our outcomes, but it was gratifying to see how in tune we all were with the general objectives.
Speaker: Tim Sarrantonio
The average nonprofit uses five or more different software platforms to create their donor’s journey, making the experience clunky and disjointed. If you want to design a magical online giving experience for donors, making their journey as seamless as possible is key. In this webinar with expert Tim Sarrantonio, you’ll learn the fundamental steps to create an immersive and personalized online giving experience for your donors.
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
NOVEMBER 8, 2004
I just returned from Brazil yesterday: an exciting and meaningful trip that I'll talk about more later, I hope. Today I was at the beginning of the Microsoft Global Library Forum, and Bill Gates spoke to our (reasonably small) group. Gates was well informed about most of the technical issues around this meeting, which is the heads of libraries for the print disabled from around the world.
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
OCTOBER 31, 2004
The social entrepreneurship movement is very important to me: after being a social entrepreneur for ten years (and not knowing the term), I found out that there is a vibrant national and international community around this. Although we are doing a myriad of different things, these are the people I feel are my community. We have common challenges and a common interest in changing society.
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
OCTOBER 29, 2004
Benetech's human rights programs are going to be a key part of the. Technology for Human Rights: International Colloquium being held in Amherst early next month. It's part of the growing movement to use technology to support the fight against human rights violations around the globe.
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
OCTOBER 18, 2004
I've had many opportunities to give talks over the last few weeks, in a wide array of venues. Usually, I'm giving the general Benetech social entrepreneurship story, talking about how technology can be benefiting humanity even more, to audiences as varied as the Palo Alto Rotary Club, a Stanford Business School class, and a cocktail party for one of our funders.
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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
SEPTEMBER 17, 2004
The nature of demining operations: foreign aid. This post (one of a series) will concentrate on the big picture issues of demining operations at a national level. First of all, demining is mainly funded through foreign aid. And, this foreign aid is often channeled through national governments. For example, the U.S. is a very large funder of demining efforts through the State Department (and USAID).
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
SEPTEMBER 8, 2004
Ethan Zuckerman blogged my talk at the Berkman Center last week. He did a good job capturing the spirit of the discussion. Ethan Zuckerman's Weblog : Jim Fruchterman's talk at Berkman. We talked about intellectual property and its interaction with disadvantaged communities. We talked about books, software, drugs and instruments, and how to bring the benefits of these ideas to the world's disadvantaged communities.
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. Ball's chapter looks at the application of data mining and statistical techniques to human rights, and he reflects more generally on the role of science in human rights activism.
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
SEPTEMBER 1, 2004
The opportunity to talk to brilliant people is one of the best parts of my job. I've been in Boston this week, and had the opportunity to visit WGBH/NCAM (nation's leading captioning group for the disabled), National Braille Press, as well as folks at BU, MIT and Harvard. The proximate cause for being here was delivering my oldest child to college (Jimmy is now a freshman at Brandeis U.).
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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
AUGUST 8, 2004
Benetech likes to respond to customer demand, and this sometimes is surprising. We've never had the ability to donate to Benetech or its programs as a link on our website. Lately, this has come up from people who have been looking for that link and unable to find it, especially for Bookshare.org, where a specific donation can be linked to a tangible benefit, such as the purchase and scanning of a book for people with disabilities.
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
AUGUST 5, 2004
I'm very proud of the people who work at Benetech, and that pride extends to our alumni. Brendan Nyhan was an outstanding member of our team, doing great things for us while running the Spinsanity website. Spinsanity has been one of the nation's leading political websites, deconstructing spin from both sides of political aisle. Brendan is now getting his doctorate in political science at Duke, and just published his first book.
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
AUGUST 3, 2004
Benetech is pleased to announce that we have finalized a contract with the Commission for Reception, Truth, and Reconciliation (CAVR) of Timor-Leste (East Timor). Benetech will conduct statistical analysis of the Commission's four databases, including personal testimonies, gravesite registries, military unit deployment records and a retrospective mortality survey.
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
JULY 29, 2004
Last week I was reading the Sunday paper (the San Jose Mercury News) and I saw a speech that Jeff Skoll gave upon receiving a major philanthropy award. It was great to read about the nice things he had to say about Benetech in his Commonwealth Club speech ! I also saw an article in the Mercury yesterday about the Social Entrepreneurs boot camp at Santa Clara University.
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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
JULY 26, 2004
As some of you know, we started providing newspapers and magazines through Bookshare.org as a prototype project with NFB's Newline project. I just received a user email that made me excited. I checked back and was granted permission to quote this! Since the NFB convention in Atlanta, I've been periodically downloading the national magazines that have been made available.
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
JULY 20, 2004
After a great vacation with my family, I'm back in town for a while, working on strengthening our team. In addition to recruiting for a senior manager for our Bookshare.org enterprise, we have just opened up a position for a new Vice President of Marketing. It's exciting to build our team further, and I am especially looking forward to talking to our leading candidates.
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
JULY 6, 2004
I had the honor of addressing the National Federation of the Blind Convention this past week. We aren't ready to release the press release, but I did get the ok to post my remarks. Here they are: Remarks for the NFB 2004 Convention on Bookshare.org and Newsline Jim Fruchterman, President, Benetech. Hello, Federation!! The dream of Benetech has been to make print access for the blind as easy as it is for the sighted.
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
JUNE 25, 2004
It's time to grow the Benetech team again! Over the next few months, we'll be searching for new employees and fellows to join us in saving the world with technology. Our first position to be formally posted is for the head of our Bookshare.org project. Alison Lingane, who did a great job of designing, launching and operating Bookshare.org for the last three years, has stepped down to take a job (outside Benetech) that involves less travel to better match her family priorities.
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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
JUNE 20, 2004
More stories from my recent trip to Africa. Although Benetech has no projects planned in the area of HIV/AIDS, I was interested in learning more about this. Being part of the Schwab Social Entrepreneur program, I had met Garth Japhet from South Africa, who works in this field, and I wanted to understand more of what he does. I attended a dinner at the Africa Economic Summit on the topic, and what was surprising was how little interest the business community showed in it.
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
JUNE 10, 2004
One of the issues I was exploring on my trip to Africa was the expansion of the use of our Martus software there. When we started working on Martus four years ago, we didn't look too closely at Africa. We assumed that Martus would require PCs and telecommunications that didn't exist there. Times have changed dramatically. Cybercafes are found in quite poor areas.
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
JUNE 8, 2004
I am just back from the Africa Economic Summit in Mozambique. I was very impressed with President Chissano, the former Marxist revolutionary who is stepping down next year after leading his country for 18 years. His embrace of business development, reform, and advancing the interests of his people made quite an impression on me. He also has a terrific sense of humor.
Beneblog: Technology Meets Society
MAY 31, 2004
I'm working from Maputo, Mozambique on this U.S. Memorial Day. Today I've been talking to humanitarian demining groups about our proposed mine detector. Last week in South Africa I was discussing adaptive technology for the blind and software for human rights groups. Our Martus human rights software was just covered today by the San Jose Mercury News in an article entitled Software Helps Rights Groups Protect Sensitive Information.
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