tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59799232024-03-14T02:59:05.499-07:00Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social changeWhat happens when technology can do great things for humanity, but doesn't make a lot of money? Technology and social entrepreneur Jim Fruchterman explores the social good side of technology applications: how to get great tech tools to the people who often need them the most, but are least able to afford them!Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08214396954972460844noreply@blogger.comBlogger655125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-4295528359379138482019-02-18T10:55:00.000-08:002019-02-18T11:13:48.977-08:00Robin Seaman, Agent of Inclusion<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>On February 16th in Los Altos, California, I shared these thoughts on Robin Seaman’s impact on the world with her family and friends at her Celebration of Life.</i><br />
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Robin was beloved by the hundreds, if not thousands, of people who had the honor of coming into direct contact with her. That's the Robin we all collectively know personally. The sister, the aunt, the friend, the mentor. The shining bright spot in our day. A woman with that ineffable quality of elegance.<br />
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However, I'm here to spotlight the impact Robin had on millions of people who never had the pleasure of meeting her personally. You all might have heard something about Robin’s dedication to helping people with disabilities that affect reading. People with disabilities like blindness, visual impairment, dyslexia, physical limitations and returning vets with brain injuries -- anyone who cannot simply pick up a printed book and read it.<br />
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The nonprofit Benetech team built the revolutionary <a href="http://www.bookshare.org/" target="_blank">Bookshare</a> library for this community, all online, and based on the powerfully flexible ebook. You can take an ebook, push a button and make it Braille. Make it bigger. Make it talk. Make it read karaoke-style, which happens to be the killer app for dyslexic kids. Whatever works for the reader who needs to read differently.<br />
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We named this library Bookshare because it was created with an army of crowdsourcing volunteers, many of them blind people themselves, who scan the books using optical character recognition. This results in an ebook, which can be shared by Bookshare legally with many thousands of other disabled readers. Robin arrived at Bookshare at a critical moment just over 10 years ago. We had just won the national contract to supply ALL disabled students in the United States, with ALL the books they needed to read to succeed in school, for free.<br />
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Our crowd sourced model couldn't scale to meet this need. In addition, the quality was often not good enough to deliver fully equal access to educational books.<br />
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We thought the publishers might help. However, the publishers disliked Bookshare intensely, calling us the Napster of books. That's where Robin came in.<br />
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Robin is why we have 700,000 books in Bookshare today. Not 70,000. Robin is why those books are all high quality, the same quality enjoyed by readers without disabilities. And Robin is why we've been able to deliver over 10 million accessible books to readers with disabilities.<br />
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You probably know that Robin was a pioneer in the ebook industry, but you probably don't know how she applied those experiences and her extensive network to the cause of advancing global literacy. It's important that I share what Robin did so you can appreciate her contributions to millions already, and hundreds of millions, if not billions of people in the future.<br />
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For the last 10 years, Robin has been a constant presence in the publishing industry, inspiring publishers to ever greater commitments to social good. She sweetly, and persistently, asked every major publisher to turn over all of their crown jewels, the master copies of all of their books for free to Bookshare. Oh, and she also suggested that world rights would also be nice. Almost all the publishers said yes. The rest could only bring themselves to say maybe in the face of the Robin social good charm offensive. And, they loved her for it. Robin was calling to their deep inner love of the written word, and the desire to share books with the world. For a minute, they could forget how tough it is to be a publisher, and hearken back to why. <br />
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However, building Bookshare into the world's biggest library for people with disabilities wasn't enough social good for Robin. For the last three years she's been leading the charge for the Born Accessible campaign. She has been working to convince all the major publishers, that they should ensure that their mainstream ebooks are fully accessible, so that a blind child, the dyslexic teenager, the person who has never learned to read, the immigrant learning a new language, the long distance commuter, just about anyone, can get all the benefits Bookshare delivers today to its readers with disabilities. If it works, libraries like Bookshare would mainly be put out of business. And Robin knew so clearly that’s the right thing to do.<br />
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Thanks to the effort led by Robin, four of the top five educational publishers recently presented their future roadmaps including this vision of inclusive publishing, of global accessibility.<br />
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There's so much more that I could share about Robin’s impact. How the Bookshare she helped build became the model for the global Treaty of Marrakesh ratified by fifty countries, including the United States in the last few months. About the dozens of tributes we read at Bookshare from students, from teachers, from leaders, from publishers, all appreciating Robin’s work. About the new edition of the Book Industry Study Group’s Guide to Accessible Publishing, just released yesterday and dedicated to Robin, in honor of her role as the principal editor. And much, much more. <br />
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I hope I've illuminated the impact on the world that this amazing woman had with her dedication to sharing the power of literacy, the power and love of reading with every human being, no matter what language, economic status, or personal ability.<br />
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Although our shared mission has suffered a great loss, and would have been far better served with her continued leadership, Robin’s legacy is assured. The future of publishing is most definitely set on this new, more inclusive path. Thanks always, Robin. <br />
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For more on Robin's life, you can read the <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/Obituary/article/78970-obituary-robin-seaman-68.html">Publishers Weekly</a> article.</div>
Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08214396954972460844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-44550791814025808112018-10-29T07:30:00.000-07:002018-10-29T07:30:07.797-07:00Big News at Benetech (and for me!)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I am incredibly excited to let you know that earlier this month <a href="https://benetech.org/news/press/benetech-appoints-betsy-beaumon-as-new-ceo/" target="_blank">we announced that Betsy Beaumon</a>, Benetech’s current president, will be taking over as CEO of Benetech. Betsy is a recognized social entrepreneur who has dedicated much of her career to changing the world with software.<br />
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Our board and I are looking forward to Betsy leading Benetech to even greater impact. Under Betsy’s guidance, Benetech is developing new software for social good enterprises to connect communities with inclusive technology:<br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Service Net: Reshaping the social safety net in human services to better connect people to the services they need. </li>
<li>Born Accessible: Working with publishers to ensure that any new ebook is accessible to people who read differently - with the goal of one day making Bookshare obsolete. </li>
<li>Connected Civil Society: Applying machine learning and computer vision to document human rights violations and promote accountability in Syria in collaboration with the UN. </li>
<li>Data for Inclusion: Enabling people with disabilities to provide firsthand reports on the issues they face to inform policy at the local, national, and global level. </li>
</ul>
It would be an understatement to say that I am proud of what Benetech’s team has accomplished since our founding.
Together we:<br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Developed the first affordable reading machine for people with vision impairments.</li>
<li>Empowered over 600,000 people who are blind or dyslexic to read with Bookshare. </li>
<li>Ensured that thousands of human rights activists could securely document human rights abuses.</li>
<li>Helped environmental leaders design, manage, monitor, and evaluate global conservation projects and campaigns with the first open source conservation project management tool. </li>
<li>And, one of our proudest achievements, we helped write, negotiate, and advocate for the Marrakesh Treaty for the Blind to improve access to information for people with disabilities around the world, which was recently ratified by the U.S. Senate and goes into effect this month. </li>
</ul>
When Benetech began, we didn’t know of any other tech for good social enterprise. Today, there are hundreds of tech social entrepreneurs who have followed their passion to create enterprises that prioritize people over profit.<br />
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I can assure you that I am not retiring. I plan to stay involved at Benetech! My firm belief is that tech will play a key role in solving just about every social problem imaginable. And there is plenty of work to do—look for more from me in the coming months where I’ll share my plans.<br />
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I look forward to staying in touch with you about technology for good!<br />
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All the best,
Jim<br />
Founder, Benetech<br />
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P.S. If you are not already receiving Benetech’s news and updates, I encourage you to stay informed of the exciting progress by selecting <a href="https://benetech.org/about/contact/get-updates/">Subscribe</a>. </div>
Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08214396954972460844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-83051533122842496932018-07-16T08:37:00.000-07:002018-08-03T16:35:53.388-07:00Using Software and Data to Change the World<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I had the honor to be the opening keynoter for the first-ever <a href="https://www.goodtechfest.com/">Good Tech Fest</a>, which was held in Detroit on May 22, 2018. It was a blast to be with an entire conference full of social good software and data people from around the world.<br />
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<h1>
Using Software and Data to Change the World</h1>
We are in an amazing time. Society is a buzz about new technology: artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, autonomous cars, the surveillance state, and more.<br />
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And then we take a time machine and journey into the past – no wait! It’s just the present day social good sector. It just seems like Y2K!<br />
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Probably like many of you, I feel like a time traveler when I’m asked constantly about what machine learning and blockchain can do for the communities we want to help, and the social enterprises that serve them. Of course we know that the questioner has no data to speak of and today’s answer is probably “nothing.” With a pronounced shrug.<br />
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But wait, there’s a silver lining here. We have to realize that our questioner is asking us a question they don’t realize they are asking; they are asking how a database can help their community! A database! That’s a breakthrough of epic proportions. We have to use this opening to help advance our goal; using software and data to change the world for the better!<br />
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Collectively, we are getting ambitious about social change. Donors and communities are announcing big hairy audacious goals – end modern slavery, get to zero chronic and veteran homelessness, increase job opportunities for certain communities by a factor of two – or ten! The common thread of all of these big hairy audacious goals is that they are measurable – and they involve ecosystems of dozens, hundreds, or thousands of organizations businesses and government agencies. Complicated – but it’s good news for us geeks. Can you imagine getting any of these goals without better software and data? No way! In this day and age, it’s inconceivable to reach these social goals without data.<br />
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Tech alone will not be enough.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Adding tech to a broken human system gets you to broken faster and cheaper. </b></blockquote>
But tech supporting a reform movement – that’s the ticket, our new motto should be:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Behind every positive social revolution, there be geeks! </b></blockquote>
Are you with me?!!<br />
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Now this vision is not just about more data. This is data in service to communities. And <b>data is voice</b>.<br />
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Social change is not done to communities – it’s a partnership. We need to see data as an expression of the voices. And will of these communities. If we truly care, we need to listen to these voices. It’s the best path to lasting change.<br />
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Solving a major problem involving information is beyond the capability of any one enterprise – no matter how terrific. Even in the tech industry, with its intense turf battle, companies have come to rely on open standards for data, for APIs, for technological plumbing. While striving to establish their compelling value propositions, their secret sauce, they let go of controlling dozens, or hundreds, of technical elements. And so many people forget that these key elements at the heart of Silicon Valley, of the tech industry, are controlled by nonprofits created open standards, open interfaces and open source code – almost all developed collaboratively to solve a common problem.<br />
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This is exactly the kind of approach I expect to see more and more in areas of social good. Competing nonprofits, competing for-profits and sort of competing donors will need to come together, build trust, and create open solutions. We together should share the overarching big hairy audacious goal, and recognize that we can both cooperate while keeping our secret sauce – the thing that makes each organization important and valuable. And a very few organizations, organizations that actually aren’t advancing the interests of the community will need to change or become irrelevant.<br />
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So far – sounds great. But, can it be done? Let me tell you two stories – one 30 years in the making, and one that’s brand new.<br />
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Our largest social enterprise is Bookshare, designed to solve the reading needs of people who have a disability that interferes with reading. Disabilities like dyslexia, vision loss, or a brain injury or physical disability that gets in the way of using a printed book. We started our first social enterprise in the Wild West of dozens of proprietary word processor formats.<br />
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Before we started, blind people were read to, or had tapes of people reading the book sent to them in the mail – they physical snail mail. After we introduced PC-based reading machines, blind people could scan their own books.<br />
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After we sold that social enterprise – we used the money to start Bookshare, which used ebooks and crowdsourcing to build a lending library created by the community itself – blind people scanning books for themselves – and then sharing that scanned book with tens of thousands of other people with disabilities. It quickly became the largest library for the disabled in the world – and our books worked with a dozen devices because all of the libraries for the blind had built a common standard for ebooks, ad audiobooks, so that for-profit vendors could support the books for all of these nonprofit libraries.<br />
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Then a brilliant techie, who happens to be blind, decided that the features that were required for people with disabilities would be great for everybody. He took on leading the EPUB commercial ebook standard body – and now there’s no need for a separate standard for people with disabilities. Furthermore, instead of having to scan many books at $100 to $5000 apiece, our library now gets five to 10 thousand books each month for free, in a standard format that costs us pennies per book added to our collection. But wait, there’s more!<br />
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We have started a campaign to put ourselves out of business. Invented by Benetech’s president, Betsy Beaumon, she called it the “Born Accessible” campaign, where we are helping publishers add the accessibility features we have been retrofitting into their standard ebooks – and then certifying that publishers as an accessible publisher and encouraging buyers of books to buy accessible. We’re hoping to see the peak usage hit inside of five years in the U.S., as the commercial industry increasingly sells the books we used to give away!<br />
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My second example is just a year old. But it shares much of the same playbook. Our goal is to work together with funders, nonprofits, for-profits, government agencies, and communities themselves, to create an open data ecosystem for social services data. In short, we dream of a day not too far off where the social safety net is as accessible and as rich as information is in the retail business net – when it’s as easy to get the help you need as it is to get a great sandwich or a new toaster.<br />
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And we are not alone, or the first, to have this dream. A community organizer named Greg Bloom has been working on this for over five years. After doing a stint as a Code for America fellow, he helped create the Open Referral Initiative, to make it easier to share data about social services – data at the heart of the referral process.<br />
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Our part is knowing how to bring together the community of organizations that need this data and build the software glue for that community. The field today is firmly stuck in the yellow pages era of data management – where many organizations over the country are spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars each to capture what is essentially commodity, public metadata about social services agencies and the services they provide.<br />
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Just in the San Francisco Bay Area, we convinced eleven organizations that collectively spend seven figures developing their own databases of this information. We promised not to criticize anybody’s database publicly, but we did tell them how their database compared to the other ten in aggregate. You won’t be surprised what we found out. Twenty percent of social service sites only appeared in one database, and for the seventy percent of sites that appeared in more than one database – each of the different entries contained multiple unique nuggets of valuable information – data that everybody would like to have but only showed up in one database entry.<br />
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The way forward is exciting – and you can bet better open data is at the core of this social enterprise. This enterprise should look like the same kind of invisible plumbing provided by the nonprofits doing standards and open source middle-ware for companies in the internet/web space. But, cost savings, opportunity for innovation and impact that will create (for social good, not industrial profit alone) should be mind-blowing.<br />
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We can now promise every kid with a print-related disability in the country that if they need an accessible book for their education, we will get it for them. Not because of our organization alone, but because of a rich ecosystem of for-profits, nonprofits and government agencies working together with open standards that make what was formerly impossible, possible – and for less money than before.<br />
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In the future, I believe a different, but similar ecosystem will make the social safety net as visible and rich as the retail business information net is today. And I believe that similar opportunity lurks at the heart of every social problem humanity is facing. That people, and animals, and the planet are facing.<br />
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I believe it will create a new opportunity for software and data geeks to give back collectively for massive impact. And it will demand a new class of talent, skilled in helping strategize the software and data ecosystem for entire fields – not just a single organization.<br />
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I personally cannot imagine a more exciting journey ahead. I want to help make that motto I mentioned earlier true in dozens of domains, that behind every positive social revolution, there will be geeks.<br />
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Not geeks for our own sakes, but geeks because we will be an indispensable part of making the world a better and more just place for all for all of humanity, not just the richest 1%!!<br />
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Let’s go!<br />
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Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13726177419464040353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-85929116028376199622018-07-09T15:34:00.000-07:002018-07-09T15:34:22.709-07:00Bringing Millions of Books to Billions of People: Making the Book Truly Accessible<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h1>
I believe in the power of books to change the world.</h1>
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-S5Mj34GzcSI/Wz4smzU7JeI/AAAAAAAAIH0/9sLL8oWR5o4MLLUC4k3GpW0pmppaSf9kQCLcBGAs/s1600/Book%2Bvendor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="A bookseller at a table, making an ok sign." border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="379" height="227" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-S5Mj34GzcSI/Wz4smzU7JeI/AAAAAAAAIH0/9sLL8oWR5o4MLLUC4k3GpW0pmppaSf9kQCLcBGAs/s320/Book%2Bvendor.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a>That is not a particularly radical belief among librarians, but I hope to make you believe even more in the power of books. 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. Today, we are poised at a moment in time where we can transcend the limitations of past book technologies and bring the power of books to all humans.<br />
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To bring the power of books to everybody on this planet, we must make books truly accessible.<br />
<h1>
Love of the print book. It made me who I am.</h1>
I’m a big fan of the printed book and always have been. However, as a technology, printed books come with serious challenges for some communities (like blind people) that technology can unlock.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bT418oi1oIc/Wz4sqnFH2TI/AAAAAAAAIIA/ar0QSVJNwPI0rTOazvG44PHSw8e-Nf5SQCLcBGAs/s1600/Book%2Bin%2BChains.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="A book chained to a computer" border="0" data-original-height="291" data-original-width="410" height="227" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bT418oi1oIc/Wz4sqnFH2TI/AAAAAAAAIIA/ar0QSVJNwPI0rTOazvG44PHSw8e-Nf5SQCLcBGAs/s320/Book%2Bin%2BChains.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a>Consider the issues with printed books. First, they are place-based. In order to read a printed book, you must have physical access to it. What if you live in a place without physical books or can’t get to where the books are? Second, producing a physical book is expensive. Many books are never published because of the costs. Those that are published don’t actually reach many of the people who might want to read them because of affordability. Third, the print book is not universally accessible. The print book doesn’t work for people who are blind, partially sighted, dyslexic, have physical limitations, people who haven’t learned to read, or people who can’t read the particular language of a specific book is written in.<br />
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Lack of access to the knowledge in books perpetuates ignorance, generates poverty and squanders human potential.<br />
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We can do better!<br />
<h1>
The miracle of ebooks</h1>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-laJyQLC3chc/Wz4sq4N2SNI/AAAAAAAAIII/TWxZM9KhWk42wwj6qAxXVa1WcInd-8aaACLcBGAs/s1600/Kevin%2BLeong%2Breading.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="boy reading a tablet outside" border="0" data-original-height="281" data-original-width="395" height="227" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-laJyQLC3chc/Wz4sq4N2SNI/AAAAAAAAIII/TWxZM9KhWk42wwj6qAxXVa1WcInd-8aaACLcBGAs/s320/Kevin%2BLeong%2Breading.png" title="" width="320" /></a></div>
What if we had the ability to overcome these accessibility barriers, barriers that affect most of humanity, not just people with identified disabilities, wouldn’t we have the moral obligation to act? Fortunately, the ebook has made that possible:<br />
•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Ebooks are easy to produce: authors now write books almost exclusively in a word processor program, and that’s an ebook;<br />
•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Ebooks are easy to distribute: making millions of copies costs almost nothing, and technically they can reach almost all of the places where potential readers are;<br />
•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Ebooks are flexible in consumption: you can read it the way you want, where you want, keep it digital, make it physical.<br />
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HYoLS4Xk6dE/Wz4sqUAQayI/AAAAAAAAIH8/1Ji3ttl-GdgAQZCHUiKg2Xb9qCbbJQgPQCLcBGAs/s1600/Braille%2Breading.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="Fingers on a braille page, with ink writing along the braille letters" border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="448" height="228" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HYoLS4Xk6dE/Wz4sqUAQayI/AAAAAAAAIH8/1Ji3ttl-GdgAQZCHUiKg2Xb9qCbbJQgPQCLcBGAs/s320/Braille%2Breading.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a>It’s of course this last capability, flexibility, that is so powerful for people with disabilities. We can use the same ebook file to deliver the content ten different ways. With a press of a virtual button, an ebook can be printed, displayed in large print (on a page or on a display), made into braille (on a page or on an electronic braille display), or read aloud as audio. The killer app for many people with dyslexia is karaoke-style reading, where the word is visually highlighted (follow the bouncing ball) the moment it is spoken aloud.<br />
This adaptability isn’t just for people with disabilities: personalized content helps everyone. A physical book is a one-size-fits all solution, where the individual needed to adapt to its limitations, availability, and cost. Ebooks are adaptable, meeting the reader where and how they want to read, and more likely, within their means.<br />
<h1>
The missing pieces</h1>
So, knowing the limitations of the print book, and the miracles made possible by the ebook, what else do we need to enable this potential? I believe it is a combination of copyright exceptions and business model innovations.<br />
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0iC1o2wLLnc/Wz4sqjLzGOI/AAAAAAAAIIE/3vgRUajYbAAO-hH4SwT7D3WHBiU2YxfIQCLcBGAs/s1600/Jeffersonian%2Bcandle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="Book with a pen across the open pages, with a candle in the background" border="0" data-original-height="294" data-original-width="414" height="227" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0iC1o2wLLnc/Wz4sqjLzGOI/AAAAAAAAIIE/3vgRUajYbAAO-hH4SwT7D3WHBiU2YxfIQCLcBGAs/s320/Jeffersonian%2Bcandle.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a><br />
I love to hark back to Thomas Jefferson’s take on ideas. “He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature…” These great qualities of ideas led to our legal system regulating the propagation of ideas differently than physical objects. The ebook, as an intangible representation of the book, lends itself well to this different approach. It creates an opportunity to have public benefit being balanced with business interests.<br />
For the content of books, this flexibility is expressed in ideas like public domain, when the copyright owned by the author or publisher ends at some point. We have an array of copyright exceptions that cover the activities of archives and libraries, especially fair use and the copyright exception that benefits people with disabilities. Other people at this gathering are far better versed in fair use, and especially the buy one lend one concept. This concept has been pioneered by the Internet Archive with its Open Library can lend a digital copy of a book for a period of time as long as it (or a partner library) owns a physical copy of that book which it holds back from being lent to someone else. My particular expertise is in using the disability copyright exception (also known as the Chafee Amendment or Section 121 of the Copyright Act in the U.S.) to end the book famine for Americans with qualifying disabilities: more about that later. My point is that copyright exceptions enable the ebook to deliver far more social benefit than would be practical in an earlier era.<br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WTq6uZD2NhQ/Wz4srsWkAxI/AAAAAAAAIIY/BHPu5sK0Q8EJIA1phAkO0WD51XdwqvJ8QCLcBGAs/s1600/The%2BBookseller.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="A page from a book with a poem about a sad bookseller, and the facing page has a drawing of a bookseller." border="0" data-original-height="258" data-original-width="363" height="227" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WTq6uZD2NhQ/Wz4srsWkAxI/AAAAAAAAIIY/BHPu5sK0Q8EJIA1phAkO0WD51XdwqvJ8QCLcBGAs/s320/The%2BBookseller.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a></div>
The second group of enablers of the brighter future are business model innovations. By this, I am not just talking about the publishing business, but also the nonprofit libraries committed to universal accessibility. A virtual good, a non-rivalrous good, enables a far greater range of business models, options for sustainability, than a traditional industry based on exchanging physical goods. We see this with a much greater ability to lower prices, to offer all you can read subscription pricing plans, to choose to license content freely, to publish open access articles, and so on. Technology advances have created the opportunity for many of us to experiment with one or more of these models.<br />
<h1>
The Bookshare story</h1>
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4DCa0oY3lkg/Wz4srN-0fsI/AAAAAAAAIIM/DMdNmuOmEoo0OJZs0y2yb4ONMegZdqfUQCLcBGAs/s1600/Napster%2Blogo.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="napster logo" border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="1200" height="168" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4DCa0oY3lkg/Wz4srN-0fsI/AAAAAAAAIIM/DMdNmuOmEoo0OJZs0y2yb4ONMegZdqfUQCLcBGAs/s320/Napster%2Blogo.png" title="" width="320" /></a>Bookshare is a real example of the confluence of how all of these exciting developments were able to drive an innovative new way of addressing a social problem, and demonstrating the potential of what ebooks can do.<br />
For me, it started in late 1999 noticing a new icon on our home PC. These were the days when people had just one PC at home. My 14-year-old son Jimmy had installed some new software, against my express wishes to not install random software from the Internet (still a good idea!). Jimmy explained it wasn’t software from the Internet; he had gotten it from his friend Chris who lived two doors down from us. Turns out that Chris’ mom was the acting CEO of a new software company, “Napster.”<br />
I had never heard of it. Jimmy and I spent an hour trading music together. He would play me a 90’s punk song, and I’d download Pat Benatar (saying, I had music like that when I was your age). It was a magical hour. At the end, I would have paid any amount of money for this new product. Jimmy then explained it was free, and would always be free. As we all know, the record companies ensured this was not the case, forcing Napster to shut down.<br />
However, experiencing Napster sparked the idea for me of creating Bookster. At the time, my nonprofit social enterprise was the leading maker of reading machines for people who were blind or dyslexic, giving them the power to scan their own books and printed material. My idea was that instead of three thousand families each investing four hours scanning the latest Harry Potter book, as they did in those days, we could scan it once, proofread it to correct the optical character recognition errors, and get the accessible Harry Potter to tens of thousands readers with far less work!<br />
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BvhXlQvbN-k/Wz4sqdGJiRI/AAAAAAAAIH4/U-NOGOwh6XwHyK9jPBIK7YXDn_kyEcIbwCLcBGAs/s1600/Bookshare%2Buser%2Band%2Bstats.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="Smiling boy in front of a PC" border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="380" height="227" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BvhXlQvbN-k/Wz4sqdGJiRI/AAAAAAAAIH4/U-NOGOwh6XwHyK9jPBIK7YXDn_kyEcIbwCLcBGAs/s320/Bookshare%2Buser%2Band%2Bstats.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a>I went right away to my lawyer, Gerry Davis, and told him of my vision, which I worried might be illegal. He came back the next day and gave me unbelievably positive news. A new copyright exception has been adopted nationwide just a couple of years earlier, the Chafee Amendment (also known as Section 121). My idea was completely legal! I was amazed: when do you come up with a great idea that is probably illegal and it turns out to be fine? Gerry did have one other piece of critical advice: change the name.<br />
And that’s how Bookshare was founded.<br />
Today, more than 15 years after the creation of Bookshare, we’re now the largest digital library dedicated to serving people with disabilities. We have over half a million readers in the United States, and over 625,000 different ebook titles available for instant download.<br />
<h1>
Ending the Book Famine: the Marrakesh Treaty</h1>
The World Blind Union talks about the global book famine experienced by blind people, and the negative impacts on education and employment on many millions of people around the world. The next challenge we’re working on is to bring this incredible library to the rest of the world.<br />
Remember how crucial the Section 121 copyright exception was to creating Bookshare? Together with the World Blind Union and other campaigners, we set out to get a global treaty that would not only replicate the U.S. copyright exception, but also allow for easy importing and exporting of accessible books.<br />
Ten years ago, I was one of a handful of leaders who got together to create a first draft of a global treaty. Just three years ago, negotiators from around the world converged on Marrakesh, Morocco, to hash out a final deal. It was highly controversial. Amazingly enough, it wasn’t the publishers who fought against the treaty; the publishing industry has a long history of supporting access for the blind, as long as their interests are respected. It was Hollywood, and the patent holders, who came out against the Treaty. Even though their movies and patents were not covered by the treaty draft, they were concerned the Treaty might be a bad precedent for them.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-axQmVpSS4zM/Wz4sre2jNCI/AAAAAAAAIIQ/upVMfxZzOMM6zsH1xaPjlxC1mak46vtNQCLcBGAs/s1600/Stevie%2BWonder%2Bat%2BMarrakesh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img alt="Stevie Wonder standing with a mic, addressing a conference" border="0" data-original-height="310" data-original-width="436" height="227" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-axQmVpSS4zM/Wz4sre2jNCI/AAAAAAAAIIQ/upVMfxZzOMM6zsH1xaPjlxC1mak46vtNQCLcBGAs/s320/Stevie%2BWonder%2Bat%2BMarrakesh.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stevie Wonder at the Marrakesh Conference</td></tr>
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At that time, the National Federation of the Blind was running a campaign against the leaders of these big corporations, with billboards on I-95 saying things like “The CEO of GE wants to keep the blind in the dark!” and “The CEO of Caterpillar wants to bulldoze the blind.” We reached out to Stevie Wonder who promised to give a concert to the negotiators if they negotiated a treaty that the blind would endorse. Stevie recorded a short video that was shown twice at plenary sessions of the diplomats in Marrakesh. The second time was at a crucial moment when the Treaty seemed to hang in the balance.<br />
Miraculously, the world’s countries came together and successfully negotiated the “Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled.”<br />
Today, the Marrakesh Treaty has been ratified by more than thirty countries, and went into international effect and law as of last year. The European Union is committed to fully ratify by September of 2018 for another 28 countries. And, the U.S. Senate just ratified the Treaty!<br />
It’s that global vision that brings us into partnership with the Internet Archive around their larger Open Library dream.<br />
When we first launched Bookshare, members paid for a subscription, however, the subscriptions weren’t enough to cover our costs. Our current model mainly depends on government and foundation support enabling us to provide free library services to members. It works well for students in the United States, but we’re still not reaching American adults to the extent we would like. We share the goal of bringing more books to American adults, but the vast Open Library vision inspired us to go even further.<br />
Our goal in working with the Internet Archive on the Open Library would be to experiment with a Wikipedia-style “please donate if you can” model to offer a global solution for free to everybody. We would need an additional $1-2 million/year of funding to begin this type of experiment globally, but we’re already planning to experiment with it in some of the least wealthy countries in the world.<br />
<h1>
Born Accessible</h1>
Our long term goal, however, is putting ourselves out of business.<br />
Benetech’s President, Betsy Beaumon, set forth her vision for the future with the words, “If it’s born digital, it should be born accessible!” Remember how wonderful the ebook is for everybody, especially people with disabilities? Well, just like 99+% of the people benefiting from a curb cut designed for wheelchair access are not wheelchair users, everybody would benefit from ebooks with the features we deliver today in Bookshare. Features like books that will read aloud, or have graphics that explain what you are supposed to learn from them.<br />
Our Born Accessible project means working closely with publishers to see that they put accessibility features in all of their mainstream ebooks. We’re convinced that not only do most people with disabilities prefer the dignity of being able to purchase their own ebooks, but that these features will make the publishers more money, because they make their product better for everybody. And then, accessible library services will be work the same as public libraries work today for people without disabilities, serving people who can’t afford books, or don’t choose to buy books. That will be equality!<br />
<h1>
Predict the Future</h1>
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QhonhVNEklQ/Wz4srUdOBQI/AAAAAAAAIIU/UK4Mf-gaKYY-R_sAxek3Qhb9gJ_pNxZLACLcBGAs/s1600/Smiling%2Bbook%2Bbrowser.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="Smiling woman in front of bookshelves." border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="448" height="228" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QhonhVNEklQ/Wz4srUdOBQI/AAAAAAAAIIU/UK4Mf-gaKYY-R_sAxek3Qhb9gJ_pNxZLACLcBGAs/s320/Smiling%2Bbook%2Bbrowser.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a>One of the great things about being around the tech field for decades is the ability to confidently predict the future. Maybe not exact dates, and maybe not everything happens the way we project, but it’s possible to paint an exciting picture of the world that is definitely possible. Here is just a taste of what I think is possible, and maybe even probable:<br />
•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A global library that makes people with disabilities first-class citizens when it comes to access to books and other information.<br />
•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>All students around the world have access to rich and varied educational content.<br />
•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The publishing industry makes the great majority of ebook content sing and dance for people with disabilities by default, reaching so many more people with disabilities than we could ever reach.<br />
•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>People without identified disabilities benefit from content that adapts to their reading and learning preferences/styles.<br />
•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Machine intelligence both greatly enhances the accessibility of rich content, and offers the ability for high-quality translations into a wide array of languages, including simplifying that content.<br />
•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The publishing industry continues to thrive, finding business models that sustain them and deliver profits to their shareholders, without fighting the idea of copyright exceptions and public interest so much.<br />
<h1>
Conclusion</h1>
Print books were a wonderful technology for the last few centuries, but it still presented huge barriers in terms of economics, usability, and access. The ebook has overcome these barriers. The use of copyright exceptions and novel business models have become practical on a massive scale, enabling new capabilities while keeping the balance between the interests of society and of publishers and authors. The Internet Archive and Bookshare are just two examples of what is possible, and both organizations have barely scratched the surface of what they could deliver. The library leaders represented here are in the vanguard, helping realize bright future for the expanded impact of the book in its ebook form.<br />
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If you believe in the power of the book, if you love the book, if you feel the moral imperative to share that power and love with everybody, then you should join us in working together to fully realize this promise and bring millions of books to billions of people!<br />
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<h2>
Source Note</h2>
Based on a Keynote Address to the 2017 Internet Archive Library Leaders Forum. The Forum focused on the Internet Archive’s Open Library Project, which has a goal to greatly increase access to books to people around the United States and the world.<br />
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Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13726177419464040353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-83974287529001063322018-04-24T18:20:00.003-07:002018-04-24T18:20:51.150-07:00Tribute to My Mentor<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In honor of Gerry Davis, April 2018</h3>
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My mentor <a href="http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/montereyherald/obituary.aspx?n=guillett-gervaise-davis-iii&pid=188799582&fhid=6695">passed away</a> earlier this month. I have had the benefit of numerous mentors over my long career, but Gerry Davis was The Mentor. We worked together for over 35 years, from the very beginnings of my Silicon Valley career. Gerry’s incredible advice guided me along my entire path, and so many crucial turning points went well because of Gerry’s invaluable insight and guidance.</div>
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Gerry was one of the earliest computer software attorneys, and even wrote one of the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Software-Protection-Practical-Computer-Programs/dp/0442219032">first</a> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Software-Protection-Practical-Computer-Programs/dp/0442219032">books on the subject</a>. I could always count on Gerry to come up with a breakthrough idea that made something I dreamed about doing become a reality. He considered himself a “problem-solving lawyer” and warned me against getting involved with “problem-creating lawyers!” I am incredibly indebted to Gerry for so many reasons but want to highlight three in particular.<br />
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First, Gerry turned me from a geek into a businessperson and entrepreneur. When I cofounded my first (successful) Silicon Valley startup, Calera, I was really young and clueless. I was ten years younger than my two cofounders, and they stuck me with being the chief financial officer. And stuck was the operative word: I stayed in that role for seven years. I needed help with business negotiations and software licensing and Gerry jumped in teaching me everything I know about doing business. He taught me that 95% of the time I didn’t need help from him or another attorney. Most importantly, he walked me through how to frame the goal of any agreement with another organization, and to think through scenarios of how it might go sour. He called these “imaginary horribles.” Thanks to Gerry, I never ended up in court with a legal contract, because he taught me to think through the angles before ever signing anything.<br />
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Second, Gerry was instrumental in the founding of Benetech. When Calera’s board vetoed my idea of a new product: a reading machine for the blind, I was distraught. I was in love with this idea, and Gerry knew it. When I explained that our board just didn’t see manufacturing reading machines for the blind making financial sense for a for-profit company, Gerry said “How about you set up a deliberately nonprofit tech company?” I laughed, because at the time Calera was an accidentally nonprofit tech company: it was organized as a for-profit but was still losing (a lot of) money.<br />
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Gerry patiently explained that he would volunteer his time on a pro bono basis to incorporate and get IRS approval for my new company to make reading machines for the blind, one that was set up as a nonprofit charity.<br />
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This seemed exceptionally clever: even if we lost money, we’d be successful by definition as a deliberately nonprofit tech company! 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). Gerry served on Benetech’s board of directors for 29 years, always there for advice and tackling the next big opportunity. As the prototypical technology social enterprise, Benetech became one of the first organizations <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>using technology to solve social problems rather than seeking to make maximum financial returns.</div>
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Third, there would be no Bookshare if it had not been for Gerry. I was always coming up with new, crazy ideas of social ventures, and Gerry was a great sounding board. In late 1999, I had just seen the original Napster product, and I knew we had thousands of families scanning the same Harry Potter book on our reading machines for people who were blind or dyslexic. What if we could scan once, proofread the resulting scan, and share that ebook with tens of thousands of eager readers? I went to Gerry with the idea for Bookster.<br />
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Gerry quickly did the legal research and came back to explain that my idea, which seemed like it should be illegal, was 100% permitted under an obscure provision of the copyright law! He also firmly suggested that I needed to change the name. I had already grabbed the Bookster.org domain, but Gerry patiently explained that the publishers had far more lawyers than we had books at that point, and that my chosen name would needlessly antagonize the publishers. We quickly came up with Bookshare as a better and more descriptive name.<br />
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He took the idea one step further. Using his incredible connections in the legal field, he obtained a chance for the two of us to present to the Copyright Committee of the Association of American Publishers. This group was the cream of the publishing industry’s legal talent, the general counsels of all the major publishers. More than a year before launching Bookshare, we shared our plans with this skeptical committee. One of the first reactions was “no one has ever come to tell us of their plans to steal our content in advance before!” Gerry’s strategy worked like a charm: by consulting well in advance, we were able to come to some compromises to make the publishers more comfortable that we were indeed operating within the copyright law and actually helping bona fide people with disabilities. When we launched Bookshare, the head of the publishers’ association sent around an email reassuring their members that we were good guys, and to please not sue Bookshare!<br />
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Bookshare has gone on to become the world’s largest library for people with disabilities, serving more than half a million kids with disabilities in the U.S. alone.<br />
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Gerry was like a father to me. He had graduated from Georgetown Law School just a couple of years after my dad. I was actually born at Georgetown University Hospital just one year after Gerry launched his legal career from there! I know how big and wide his legal career was, and I was just one of the many clients to benefit from his legal brilliance and ability to see to the very heart of any problem. Not only that, Gerry also turned me and a bunch of the Benetech team onto digital photography. Gerry enabled my life’s work in so many ways!</div>
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Gerry stayed on Benetech’s board until early this year, because he prized the mental stimulation of doing good with technology. Just last month, he helped me solve a knotty trademark and web domain challenge. I hope that Gerry’s family knows how much his contributions were appreciated by the Benetech team, and the millions of lives our work has touched. None of it would have been possible without the brilliant heart and mind of my mentor, G. Gervaise Davis III, Esq.</div>
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Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08214396954972460844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-1656340715329514692018-01-02T14:54:00.000-08:002018-01-02T14:54:26.466-08:00Jamila Hassoune, the Librarian of Marrakesh, announces a new Book Caravan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CEqW3sfvBBw/WkwM9O3yeQI/AAAAAAAAHGc/ZAbRUYokn7savo7F0Wubde8QEDov6wZaQCLcBGAs/s1600/J-Hassoune-2-3234.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Seated woman" border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1066" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CEqW3sfvBBw/WkwM9O3yeQI/AAAAAAAAHGc/ZAbRUYokn7savo7F0Wubde8QEDov6wZaQCLcBGAs/s320/J-Hassoune-2-3234.jpg" title="Jamila Hassoune, the Librarian of Marrakesh" width="213" /></a>I've been privileged to meet so many awesome social entrepreneurs around the world, doing fabulous work without much recognition (and often, even less funding).
<a href="http://www.jamila-hassoune.ma/">Jamila Hassoune</a> is one of those social entrepreneurs, and we share a love for books and the power of access to books. We've been in touch for almost fifteen years, and I met her in person in 2014 when I was attending the diplomatic conference that resulted in the Treaty of Marrakesh. She's known as the <a href="http://benetech.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-librarian-of-marrakesh.html">Librarian of Marrakesh,</a> in recognition of her dedication to books and her role as Morocco's first woman bookseller.<br />
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She leads Book Caravans into Morocco's rural regions to share knowledge, books and history with students and women.
She just sent me the announcement of her new Book Caravan:
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<blockquote>
<h1>
The 13th book caravan</h1>
<h2>
Under the theme: The valorization of our heritage is a responsibility of our present and our future.</h2>
Jamila Hassoune is pleased to announce the 13th Edition of the book caravan from April 16 to 20, 2018. This edition will take place in the region Draa-Tafilalet in the south-east of Morocco, whose main city is Errachidia. Tafilalet is historical region famous for the largest oasis in the world located in Erfoud. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Its living heritage and earthen constructions are a particularity of the pre-Saharan architecture. It was formerly known as Sijilmassa which was a former capital of Tafilalet. The date of the first foundation of this city is still imprecise. Léon l’africain reported that the City might be traced back to the era of Alexander the Great or that it would have been founded by a Roman general.
Re-founded in 757 on the Saharan caravan route between the Niger River and Tangiers -- time before Tiaret (761), before Fez (808)-- Sijilmassa seems to be the oldest Muslim foundation in the Maghreb. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
According to resources of the East, it was a real center of civilization at that time. Many books and writings have helped to describe this region. The books of the geographer and historian Al Bakri, the traveler Ibn Batuta, european explorers like Renè Caillé, Gerhard Rohlfs, Walter Harris, Meunié…ect are among the famous references that document this civilization. These writings deserve a great and profound reading to restore the value of this region. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Related to this subject the book caravan is intended to organize a four days vibrant event of culture full of activities for middle and high school students in Errachidia and Erfoud. This event aims to offer a context of exchange between participants from different parts of the world and the local community.</blockquote>
If you have an interest in women's literacy and literacy in general, please learn more about my friend, the Librarian of Marrakesh!<br />
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Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13726177419464040353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-41800196568673049302017-10-05T16:51:00.002-07:002017-10-05T16:51:54.329-07:00Thinking of and Thanking Paul Otellini<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
A friend just sent me the surprising and sad <a href="https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/paul-s-otellini-1950-2017/">news of the unexpected passing of former Intel CEO, Paul Otellini</a>. Paul did so many things for me over a long career at Intel, and I had to put fingers to keyboard (something Intel enabled, of course) right away to acknowledge his many (and unknown) contributions to my work.<br />
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I first met Paul over thirty years ago. My first (successful) Silicon Valley company had Sevin-Rosen as lead investors, and Roger Borovoy was our board chair, the former Intel General Counsel. Roger thought that outside board service would be a good experience for an up and coming Intel executive, and that our startup would really benefit from Paul's input. The company went on to great success, and today is still represented in the product lines of Nuance (NUAN).<br />
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Paul was there on the fateful day when I presented a reading machine prototype to the Calera Recognition Systems board. The board's veto of the project (because it wasn't a big enough financial opportunity) led to the founding of what is today my nonprofit organization, Benetech. Paul was helpful in getting Calera to approve incredibly favorable terms for the sale of its TrueScan hardware OCR boards to my nonprofit (roughly a 80% discount off a hardware product, plus extended credit), which made the Arkenstone Reader possible (the first affordable reading machine for the blind).<br />
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Years later, after I was full-time at the nonprofit, we had replaced the TrueScan card with the WordScan OCR software (today's Omnipage software is probably a great granddaughter product), and the largest single cost in our reading machines was the Intel chip inside it. And, because the OCR was very compute-intensive, the speed of the Intel chip mattered a lot.<br />
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Intel didn't have a great reputation for being socially conscious back then. I remember an Upside magazine cover from early in Andy Grove's tenure (he was CEO of Intel back in those days) that portrayed Intel as Scrooge. A very different Intel than today, which has a great reputation for environmental sensitivity and is a huge funder of education work (something that Paul greatly expanded later on when he became Intel's CEO).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APaul_otellini.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="By Tumbenhaur (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons"><img alt="Paul otellini" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Paul_otellini.JPG/256px-Paul_otellini.JPG" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Paul Otellini</td></tr>
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I called Paul, who was then heading Intel's division in Folsom, California, and asked him if he could find top of the line 486 DX-2 chips that were cosmetically flawed (like the label was misapplied) but fully functional. His team scrounged up hundreds and sent them to us for free, which were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. It enabled us to cut the price of our reading machine to blind people by $1000 (the chips cost $500 each, and our markup was twice the cost to cover our staff and our dealers, who were mainly blind business-people, so we lowered the price by twice the value of the discount). <br />
<br />
When we were running low on the donated chips, I circled back to Intel and asked for their newest chips, the Pentiums. I think that by that time Paul had already moved up at Intel, and his successor Vin Dham (pretty much Mr. Pentium) was happy to continue to do as Paul had. They mentioned that finding cosmetically marred chips was too time consuming, would we mind getting regular chips of their second fastest Pentium model? Oh, and would it be ok if they sent a million dollars worth of chips: it would make a better press release!<br />
<br />
You might imagine I said yes. And two days later, a step-van showed up and a million dollars of Pentiums were delivered to our back door. We were flabbergasted! It turns out that a million dollars of Pentiums is worth more than its weight in gold; it was roughly a quarter of a single pallet. We were also terrified, since at the time in the 90s, there was a spate of chip robberies in Silicon Valley. We put some in a safe deposit box in our bank, and hid a bunch of them in different places for safekeeping. Luckily, we managed to use all of them in reading machines.<br />
<br />
Our team was so excited, we made a tactile version of the "Intel Inside" logo and put them on our reading machines so that our blind users would have access to the same labels sighted people had! I don't think it was very easy to get Intel's approval of the variation of their logo/label, but we did.<br />
<br />
Of course, one of the major breakthroughs in our reading machines were that they were all Intel PCs, which meant that our users not only got the benefit of a talking reading machine, they also had all of the capabilities of a personal computer to use in education, employment or social inclusion. At the time, I wrote an article about the PC as the "Swiss Army knife" for people who had disabilities: it was able to overcome so many challenges for them, allowing them so much of the independence that people without disabilities had when it came to working with information. <br />
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I have a feeling that these were some of the earliest big donations from Intel to social good, and Paul was the guy who made it happen.<br />
<br />
Of course, Paul went on to eventually become the CEO of Intel and accomplish big things in the business world. But, he kept a strong connection to the disability field. One of his children was identified with dyslexia, and he and his wife, Sandy, became major leaders in the dyslexia activism field. Paul championed the Intel Reader, a reading machine for people with dyslexia, and we worked closely with Ben Foss, the dynamic "out" dyslexic who drove that project forward.<br />
<br />
Paul also helped us when we were fighting the biggest advocacy battle of our history, to get the Marrakesh Treaty. A patent alliance of major manufacturers came out against the Marrakesh Treaty, and Intel's name was on the mast-head. I followed up with Paul and quickly figured out Intel had had nothing to do with this anti-accessibility position. As a result of that ping (and a bunch of others, I'm sure), a whole bunch of major tech companies disavowed the position of the patent alliance. Getting industry to back off their opposition to a treaty for people with disabilities was the turning point to getting a treaty that the United States government could endorse. <br />
<br />
His commitment to people who read differently is illustrated by the <a href="http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sfgate/obituary.aspx?n=paul-otellini&pid=186862095&fhid=2515">family's request</a> that contributions to Paul's memory be made out to UCSF's Dyslexia Center.
I know I share the opinion of many people that we lost Paul far too soon, and that people who need technology to achieve full equality in society are poorer by his passing. Thank you, Paul, for this part of your storied career!</div>
Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13726177419464040353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-73227431157663812772017-09-19T13:29:00.000-07:002017-09-19T13:29:41.067-07:00A Call for Millions: Ending the Global Book Famine for the Blind <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: #f4f5f6; color: #37383c; font-family: "uni neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">There’s a global book famine afflicting people with disabilities. They lack the books they need for education, employment, and social inclusion. Billions have been spent addressing the problem over the past decade.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f4f5f6; color: #37383c; font-family: "uni neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">I have good news: For $5 million a year, we can build a global library that provides tens of millions of people around the world who are blind, low vision, or dyslexic free access to books that will work for them.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #f4f5f6; color: #37383c; font-family: "uni neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">Benetech has already solved this problem for students in the United States. Our Bookshare library has over 550,000 books that have been delivered digitally over 10 million times. Bookshare adapts to the needs of all readers with a disability that makes reading hard, whether they read with their eyes, ears, or fingers. We’re already delivering services at scale in three other countries—Canada, the UK, and India.</span><br />
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<picture style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source media="(min-width: 736px)" srcset="https://benetech.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Kevin-Leong-Reading-Bookshare-Book-on-iPad-e1505840564983-100-1800x750.jpg" style="box-sizing: inherit;"></source><source media="(max-width: 735px)" srcset="https://benetech.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Kevin-Leong-Reading-Bookshare-Book-on-iPad-e1505840564983-100-900x375.jpg" style="box-sizing: inherit;"></source><img alt="Kevin Leong Reading Bookshare Book on iPad" class=" lazyloaded" height="375" srcset="https://benetech.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Kevin-Leong-Reading-Bookshare-Book-on-iPad-e1505840564983-100-100x41.jpg" style="border-style: none; box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; height: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle; width: 987px;" width="900" /></picture></div>
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Very few philanthropic opportunities come with the chance to solve a global problem with modest risk. This one does. We just need the resources to scale.</div>
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Why is a global solution to the book famine possible now? How can we solve a centuries-old problem for so little money?</div>
<ul style="background-color: #f4f5f6; box-sizing: inherit; color: #37383c; font-family: "Uni Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.6; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 1.5rem 1.25rem; padding: 0px;">
<li style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit;">We have the technology</span>. Cheap devices and internet connectivity mean everything is digital. Our books will play on whatever tech the reader has in hand, even a $10 MP3 player.</li>
<li style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit;">We have the ebooks</span>. <a href="https://benetech.org/international-leaders-adopt-historic-treaty-for-the-blind/" rel="noopener" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #b74900; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">The Global Treaty for the Blind</a> makes it legal to create ebooks for people with disabilities without having to pay a royalty or getting permission. Publishers already contribute most of their ebooks to us for free, but The Treaty allows for crowdsourcing books at scale through a Napster-inspired model (but legal!).</li>
<li style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit;">We can scale quickly</span>. We’ve already built the library in the cloud, meaning we can scale infrastructure at the click of a button.</li>
<li style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit;">We have a new business model</span>. Free service with a “pay what you can” request (like Wikipedia’s) is a sustainable nonprofit model. The majority of donations stay local, sourcing content in local languages and creating jobs. We have hundreds of thousands of ebooks in a dozen languages already available globally.</li>
<li style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit;">We have baseline funding</span> to sustain the core platform: we can serve the rest of the world for less than it costs to deliver the service in the U.S. because we rely on the community to build the digital library.</li>
</ul>
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Helping people with disabilities, especially those who are blind, is a social issue of biblical proportions. We are now on the brink of solving this problem for tens of millions of people around the world. Let’s seize the opportunity!</div>
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<em style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit;">Read my recent posts that provide guidance and ideas for successful tech philanthropists: </em></div>
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<li style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit;"><a href="https://benetech.org/blog/" rel="noopener" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #b74900; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">You Can Help Us Strengthen the Social Safety Net </a></em></li>
<li style="box-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit;"><a href="https://benetech.org/tech-entrepreneurs-change-world-philanthropy/" rel="noopener" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #b74900; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Tech Entrepreneurs Can Change the World through Philanthropy </a></em></li>
</ul>
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<link rel="canonical" href="https://benetech.org/end-global-book-famine-blind/" /> </div>
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Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13726177419464040353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-63774293921327851922017-09-14T11:02:00.000-07:002017-09-14T11:02:05.094-07:00You Can Help Us Strengthen the Social Safety Net!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Tech entrepreneurs can change the world through their philanthropy.
They will achieve the greatest bang for their philanthropic buck by
prioritizing the better use of community-driven software and data. That was my
message in a recent interview, which you can read on the Benetech blog series, </span><a href="https://benetech.org/tech-entrepreneurs-change-world-philanthropy/"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">The
Impact</span></i></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">.
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Today, I’m writing to provide the first in a series of specific ideas
on how philanthropic tech entrepreneurs can do good by doing what they do best:
using software and data to create massive value. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">What if every person in need had access to the help they needed? </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Every day in every community, there are people who need help. From
a single mom facing eviction to a vet struggling with PTSD, to a domestic
violence survivor fighting for custody of her kids. A web of complex needs exists,
but information about the various services that address those needs—services that
form the social safety net—is difficult to find. Compared to the data I have at
my fingertips about businesses (how many sandwich shops are there within five
miles that are currently open?), the social safety net is effectively invisible
to the people who urgently need help. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">If we can make it easier for people in need, or the agencies
trying to help them, to find accurate information on social services, we’ll
have delivered amazing impact. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Many referral services such as call centers and web applications
collect directory information about health, legal, and social services, but the
data is locked in fragmented and redundant silos. New referral services keep
proliferating—all struggling to keep their data about available services up to date.
Resource-strapped agencies have a hard time updating their websites, not to
mention a dozen other places where their information shows up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The effort to build the proprietary “One List
to Rule Them All” is doomed to failure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">The consequences of this costly and ineffective status quo are
daunting:</span></div>
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<li><span style="color: black; font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">People in need have trouble discovering and accessing services
that can help them.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Service providers struggle to help clients meet complex needs.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Referral providers have difficulty referring people effectively.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Decision makers cannot gauge program effectiveness.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Innovators struggle to build and scale useful technologies to
serve these needs.</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">This is a systems-change challenge: how to get hundreds or
thousands of agencies to cooperate to greatly improve their ability to serve
the most vulnerable people in their community.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">The answer is open infrastructure. We need to make it as easy as
possible to share accurate social service directory information with everybody
who needs it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><a href="https://benetech.org/lab/access-social-services/"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">The Benetech Open Referral project</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> approaches this problem in
a new way, by enabling many different systems to access the same data, and
incentivizing the stakeholders to collaborate.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">By successfully coordinating data among multiple stakeholders, Benetech’s
Open Referral project can generate tools and practices that yield
transformative change by weaving a stronger social safety net. Here are a few
of the benefits:</span></div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Better access to services for people in need.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Decrease in data maintenance costs and increase in data quality.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Acceleration of innovation for new tools, apps, and projects.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Meaningful use of data in research, analysis, and decision-making.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">We need major philanthropic funding to take this effort to the
next level, beyond </span><a href="https://benetech.org/benetech-and-united-ways-of-california-partner-to-strengthen-californias-social-safety-net/"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">pilots in California</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> and </span><a href="https://benetech.org/benetech-empowers-social-services-agencies-to-better-serve-constituents-through-shared-data-platforms/"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Florida</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">, to make this kind of
information readily available in every community. The safety net is too
important to remain invisible!</span><br />
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Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08214396954972460844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-72109018609904446562017-08-24T17:48:00.001-07:002017-08-24T17:48:15.385-07:00Why We Are Voting Against the W3C Decision on Encrypted Media Extensions There is a big controversy in the technical standards area that impacts accessibility of content in web browsers. Ars Technica covered this recently in their post: <a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/07/over-many-objections-w3c-approves-drm-for-html5/">Over many objections, W3C approves DRM for HTML5</a>.<br /><br />
<br /><br />
Benetech is voting against the W3C decision on Encrypted Media Extensions (EME). Here is the statement that will accompany our vote:<br /><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">EME should not become a W3C Recommendation without adding provisions that safeguard the rights of accessibility and security researchers to do their job without risking prosecution under the DMCA and similar national legislation.These types of provisions are already implemented around patents connected to standards work, and we believe accessibility professionals deserve similar protections. </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">DRM has been the enemy of accessibility, not to mention the ugly compromise DRM represents to technical excellence and freedom. EME’s reason to exist is to implement DRM. EME is irrevocably tainted from an accessibility standpoint because of this close association. The arguments from our friends in the accessibility field arguing that EME is not DRM, or that EME's implementation of DRM overcomes the fundamental incompatibility of DRM with accessible media, are unconvincing to us at Benetech. We are an organization that has been fighting to overcome the negative impact of DRM on accessibility for over a decade.</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">We understand that the W3C has already made the decision to compromise and support DRM-related technology. We truly hope that the W3C will act to mitigate some of the damage from that decision.</blockquote><div><br /></div>Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13726177419464040353noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-4388788750520700482017-04-11T09:42:00.000-07:002017-04-11T09:42:50.393-07:00It's Good to be Alive Today!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
I am still on the Skoll high</h2>
Just back from my week in Oxford with my head buzzing and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njTNEPpgez4&index=28&list=PLHao2fgbzdxJOAzy9hFl0Ek604KapZqkD">Michael Franti's social change anthem "Good to be Alive Today"</a> ringing in my ears. It's hard to explain why this is the one conference a year I always make the time for. It's a powerful mix of inspiration, singing, ideas and most importantly, peer brainstorming. I have more than a year's worth of ideas for social good. Let me share just a few!<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Systems Entrepreneurship is on the Rise</h3>
Jeff Walker has been making the case for what he calls "systems entrepreneurship" at Harvard's Kennedy School, Skoll and <a href="https://ssir.org/articles/entry/solving_the_worlds_biggest_problems_better_philanthropy_through_systems_cha">in a new SSIR article</a>. He uses examples such as the campaign to eliminate malaria to demonstrate we need a new class of backbone organizations (borrowing from the collective impact concept identified by FSG) who are around organizing larger scale systems change with an ecosystem of players, as opposed to setting out as one organization to make the change single-handedly.<br />
<br />
This resonated with me at a very powerful level, because that's what I want to do in helping bring software and data for social good to the world's most important needs. Betsy Beaumon, Benetech's President, and the rest of our team have been working on what is the next big innovation is at Benetech beyond scaling up our current successful social enterprises. We started that thinking last year with thinking of <a href="http://benetech.blogspot.com/2016/01/benetech-equilibrium-change-machine.html">Benetech as the Equilibrium Change Machine</a>, based on Sally Osberg's book "Getting Beyond Better." Betsy and I had some great brainstorms about large scale systems change at Skoll and there's a lot more exciting thinking to be done. Expect to hear more about the software for social good revolution!<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
The CTO Gap</h3>
The lack of strategic technology expertise is hobbling many of the efforts to make the world a better place. In larger organizations, this is the role of the Chief Technical Officer. It's different from the IT manager or CIO (Chief Information Officer): it's how technology can fundamentally change the dynamic in your enterprise.<br />
<br />
Betsy and I went from meeting to meeting (occasionally even together!) playing the role of CTO-for-an-hour to so many of the world's most innovative social entrepreneurs. Not only did we realize the scale of the talent gap, but we also walked away with dozens of good ideas for how software for social good could have huge impact.<br />
<br />
Just have to find some money to do something about that.<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
But there's More</h3>
Engaging with my peer social entrepreneurs, I heard much more than just their technical requirements. They are worried about failure, because of how important their work is to the people most in need. They are worried about letting down their families, because of how all-consuming the work is. <br />
<br />
It is a reminder of how important programs that bring social entrepreneurs together to share both their aspirations and their stresses, and get recharged for the many fights ahead. Programs like the Wellbeing Project and Tendrel, and events like those organized by the Skoll and Schwab Foundations, are hugely beneficial compared to the costs involved. <br />
<br />
It lifted my heart to spend a week being inspired, singing, dancing, commiserating, while some of the world's most innovative social entrepreneurs were plotting together to make the world a much better place!</div>
Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08214396954972460844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-998783841445885542017-03-08T11:01:00.000-08:002017-03-08T11:01:45.824-08:00Fake Facebook Friends and the CIA<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Last night I received a Facebook friend request from an old friend and accepted it. Within a minute or two, a FB Messenger chat started up about the UN and the Sustainable Development Goals. So, I of course kept the conversation going. Until it quickly became a classic advance fee scam conversation (originally made famous by folks in Nigeria with faxes). <br />
<br />
I quickly checked, and found that (of course) I already was Facebook friends with my old friend. Someone had borrowed her picture and name and was starting to ply the scam trade. Facebook has a handy way of reporting this exact problem and the fake account was suspended within minutes. But, it was a reminder of how somebody who has been working with people at the forefront of the security field can be taken in, if only for five minutes. <br />
<br />
So, my advice: if an old friend reaches out to you on Facebook, someone who really should already be a Facebook friend, it's probably not your friend. With the exception of a few folks who decline to participate on Facebook on principle (and are unlikely to join now), people in my network probably are not newcomers to Facebook. And these new accounts are pretty obviously new: if you think about it. If you want to check, go out of network and email them. My friend appreciated me jumping on her impersonator.<br />
<br />
Which brings me briefly to the WikiLeaks CIA disclosure, which doesn't surprise me in terms of capabilities that the CIA has. It did surprise me that it got disclosed!<br />
<br />
Bottom-line:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>If a sophisticated state actor really wants your data, they have a lot of ways to get it, and probably will</li>
<li>The whole point of crypto and security is to raise the cost of breaking into your data. Use crypto. Use Signal. Use WhatsApp. Encrypt your hard drive. Use HTTPS. And so on.</li>
</ul>
The raising cost argument may be counter-intuitive, but it's intensely practical, and familiar. The old lock analogy goes a long way. I don't put my family's valuables on a table out in front of my house with a sign saying: take me. I don't leave my front door wide open when nobody is home. I do have a deadbolt and a security system, because I want to discourage theft. Those measures do not ensure I will not get robbed, but they raise the cost of robbery, either by slowing the robbers down or increasing the chances they will be caught by the police. But, a perfect home security system does not exist, and if it were claimed, I wouldn't believe it. <br />
<br />
I can stretch this analogy a lot further, but here's my advice to the nonprofit sector specifically. When we collect data on vulnerable people about what makes them vulnerable, we owe it to them to treat their data with the respect we'd like our most sensitive data treated. We need to implement security so that getting that data is not free and cheap to grab: we need to protect it with locks (data security) that raise the cost. And, we increasingly have to realize that parking that data openly with corporations that are susceptible to government pressure is not honoring our commitment to the communities we serve. I'm ok with Amazon hosting sensitive data for us because I know that we encrypt that data so that Amazon can't be pressured into giving up anything more than encrypted (scrambled) lumps of data. <br />
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The fact that a government still may be able to get that data with enough expenditure of money in terms of people, technology and legal effort (warrants) is simply a fact of modern life. We just need to make it hard enough that they don't bother almost all of the time. That's what we owe to the people we serve. </div>
Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08214396954972460844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-76117226933718744972016-08-25T15:29:00.000-07:002016-08-25T15:29:10.034-07:00Seeing Through Walls for Greater Independence! <h2>Kent Presents 2016</h2>I just attended the second annual Kent Presents conference in Kent, Connecticut. It’s the brainchild of Donna and Ben Rosen, a New York power couple with connections to science, technology, politics, the arts and more. There were too many awesome talks to do them justice, but you are welcome to sample the session titles <a href="https://kentpresents.org/kentpresents_2016.php">here</a>.<br /><br />
The talk that especially blew my mind was by MIT professor <a href="http://people.csail.mit.edu/dina/">Dina Katabi</a>. She and one of her graduate students demonstrated their <a href="http://www.emeraldforhome.com/#about">Emerald</a> technology, and it was the first time I’d seen this capability. I’m sure you remember the “Help I’ve Fallen and Can’t Get Up” TV commercial of late night fame. Dina’s question was: why doesn’t this work most of the time? The answer is that it’s hard to get people to wear something.<br /><br />
The Emerald approach is to do away with the thing you wear. They place a low-power (far less than a wifi router) wireless beacon in your apartment, and it can track the exact location (including altitude) of up to five people. Even through the wall into the next room. (Two rooms away is more challenging: you probably need another beacon.) She demonstrated fall detection, heartbeat, breathing detection, and more.<br /><br />
The possibilities are exciting. Fall detection better than that of an on-person accelerometer. Gait tracking to detect health challenges (gait is apparently a huge flag of issues). Figuring out if a senior isn’t getting out of bed, or taking their meds. <br /><br />
There are challenges: the cat and dog filter came up of course. And privacy is a significant factor: this is the kind of technology that triggered my essay last year on privacy, <a href="https://medium.com/@Benetech/little-sister-c4e63b4e12fa#.k50rfwrd2">Little Sister</a>.<br /><br />
But, it’s clear to me that these issues could and should be addressed and the considerable benefits for independence of seniors and people with disabilities could be huge! <br />
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Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08214396954972460844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-71598440817626991472016-06-13T17:11:00.004-07:002016-06-13T17:13:56.174-07:00Geek Heresy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I just finished reading Kentaro Toyama’s <a href="https://geekheresy.org/">new book, <i>Geek Heresy,</i></a> tackling the cult of technology as a cure-all for society’s ills. 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.<br />
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There’s often more value to me in reading iconoclastic books than feel-good affirmations of popular icons! 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. Toyama offers up strong criticisms as well as constructive advice about how to best apply technology to social problems. At the same time, there are some flaws in his arguments that are worth pointing out.<br /><br />
<h2>
Smashing Icons</h2>
Toyama’s central thesis is that we tend to overstate the benefits of technology as a magic bullet. He’s countering the world view that the technology just needs to get in the hands of the poor and miracles will happen. He broadens this to tackling what he labels “the packaged intervention,” the neatly wrapped solution that will solve a social problem. <br />
Along the way of making his case, he takes on a lot of the popular tech and business for social good memes, like:<br />
<ul>
<li>One Laptop Per Child </li>
<li>The Hole-in-the-Wall experiment </li>
<li>The Arab Spring as social media revolution </li>
<li>Toms Shoes </li>
<li>The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid (CK Prahalad) </li>
<li>Telecenters </li>
<li>The fetish of school testing (aka No Child Left Behind) </li>
<li>Google (especially some optimistic pronouncements) </li>
</ul>
He scores some good points here, usually by pointing out that the hype doesn’t match up with the claims. As a geek who is trying to apply tech for good, it is instructive to hear the critiques. Of course, from my long experience in the field, I didn’t find Toyama’s choice of targets all that surprising.<br /><br />
<h2>
Constructive Observations</h2>
Toyama makes some excellent points about the application of technology, and I think this is where the most value is to be gained.<br />
<br />
His “Law of Amplification” was particularly insightful: “technology’s primary effect is to amplify human forces.” A short-hand for this might be that technology is most useful in the hands of people who are ready to use it. He uses this to analyze why many technology interventions are successful in the pilot phase and fail when they go to scale. In the pilot phase, you frequently have the best (human) conditions: the best partners and the best program staff making something work. But, when you go to scale, you reach many partners (such as schools) who lack the human capacity to use the technology effectively. He notes: “the right people can work around a bad technology, but the wrong people will mess up even a good one.”<br />
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Wishful thinking makes many people dream of quick fixes. Why is it in the social sector we think it is so easy? I often run into this thinking, where ideas which would not be taken seriously in business are suddenly sensible in social good. Toyama on that issue: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
If a private company is failing to make a profit, no one expects that state-of-the-art data centers, better productivity software, and new laptops for all of the employees will turn things around. Yet, that is exactly the logic of so many attempts to fix schools with technology. </blockquote>
His prescription for how to use technology successfully is the following:<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>Identify or build human forces aligned with your goals. </li>
<li>Use packaged interventions to amplify the right human forces. </li>
<li>Avoid indiscriminate dissemination of packaged interventions. </li>
</ol>
His biggest prescription is around connecting with these human forces. A great teacher is going to be better than a software program on a laptop or tablet. A mentor is going to have a more powerful impact over somebody than YouTube videos.<br />
<br />
I found this to be an eminently sensible approach. When the personal computers were first dropped into American schools, they didn’t have the desired impact because the supporting environment wasn’t there. A technology intervention is only a tool, a seed. And planting a seed in a dry desert is not going to yield an abundant harvest.<br /><br />
<h2>
Collateral Damage</h2>
Although I found Geek Heresy to be a useful critique of the misapplication of technology and packaged interventions, Toyama seems to overreach in my opinion. Sometimes to the point of being just wrong.<br />
<br />
In addition to the icons I mentioned above, Toyama also takes on:<br />
<ul>
<li>Vaccines </li>
<li>Randomized controlled trials (calls their proponents the Randomistas) </li>
<li>Elections </li>
<li>Conditional cash transfers (labeled as manipulation) </li>
<li>Social entrepreneurs </li>
</ul>
Now, these criticisms were more balanced than the first wave. Toyama takes vaccines to task for not curing all preventable diseases, perhaps to emphasize how the wrong people can mess up a good packaged intervention? He’s happy to use research trials to prove that One Laptop per Child doesn’t work, but takes them to task when he thinks they get the underlying truth wrong (he picks one RCT that showed a successful result and makes the case that the positive result was really an observation of correlation not causation).<br />
<br />
It’s on the last one that Toyama makes his biggest error. He seems to define social entrepreneurs as rapacious for-profit businesspeople who are modeling “themselves on the Steve Jobses and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world.” He criticizes the founder of Toms Shoes, Blake Mycoskie, as a prototypical social entrepreneur exploiting disadvantaged children on the way to making a few hundred million selling out to Bain Capital.<br />
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This mistake seems odd, given that most of the people he cites as outstanding counter-examples against the badly applied packaged intervention craze, are what everybody else calls social entrepreneurs. People who start novel organizations like Ashesi University in Ghana, Technology Access Foundation in Seattle, and Shanti Bhavan (a boarding school) in India. It is also odd given that he cites David Bornstein’s seminal book, <i>How to Change the World,</i> to make an unrelated point and omits the full title: <i>How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas. </i>None of the people Bornstein profiles meet Toyama’s straw man definition of social entrepreneur as for-profit entrepreneur willing to step on the little people to make a buck.<br />
<br /><h2>
Conclusion</h2>
Social change in the real world is difficult, and magic bullets are few and far between. Kentaro Toyama’s Geek Heresy reminds us of this, and emphasizes that leaving humans out of the equation is a losing strategy. The hubris that is frequently on display, and the often overwrought hype claiming incredible results, are worth taking on. His observation that technology tends to amplify pre-existing differences in society is a useful insight.<br />
<br />
Toyama’s biggest point seems to be that people matter. And that tech innovations are not done to people, but intimately depend on people for any impact they successfully make. Something that any geek that aims to do social good must keep in mind!</div>
Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08214396954972460844noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-7643158569333191802016-03-29T11:22:00.000-07:002016-03-29T11:26:12.015-07:00From Money to Meaning<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h3>
Big complex social problems.</h3>
<h3>
Your skills and experiences. </h3>
<h3>
Benetech.</h3>
Combining those three potent ingredients is how we change the world. If you’ve been burning to use your considerable talents to make a difference, rather than make a lot of money, it’s time you considered joining our growing team.<br />
<br />
We are looking for more than <a href="http://www.benetech.org/want-to-help/work-for-us/">a dozen motivated individuals</a> to make the leap to positive social impact. From executives to summer interns, from engineers and product managers, to communications and outreach professionals, we have a wide range of opportunities.<br />
<br />
From children with disabilities to African human rights activists, you will have direct exposure to how Benetech’s products and services change lives for the better. Our benefits are great, and our pay is excellent by nonprofit standards! Flexibility is one of our core values. It’s just one of the reasons that Benetech is the rare software company that is majority women (also true of our managers). We believe in <a href="http://www.benetech.org/2015/08/04/help-wanted-wildcards/">wildcards</a>: if you have a creative way to address one of our needs, let us know! <br />
<br />
Silicon Valley is an incredible force for change. Unfortunately, the economic model that works so well for creating wealth, falls short when it comes to helping the poor. Communities that most need our help are often the least able to afford it. That’s why Benetech is organized as a nonprofit: we can afford to work on exciting problems. We just have to find a way to break- even! <br />
<br />
If you have read this far because this is what you are truly wishing for in your career directions, or because you know of someone great who has been dreaming our shared dream of tech for good, check out <a href="http://www.benetech.org/want-to-help/work-for-us/">our list of openings</a>. We would love to hear from you! </div>
Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08214396954972460844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-41830801466200242962016-03-03T12:43:00.002-08:002016-03-03T12:43:57.312-08:00Ratify Marrakesh!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h3>
<i>The United States Senate has a terrific opportunity to expand opportunity</i></h3>
The United States Senate has just been presented with the ratification package for the Marrakesh Treaty. We are joining with our peers in the disability and library community <a href="https://nfb.org/joint-statement-support-rapid-ratification-marrakesh-treaty"> in a joint statement </a> to strongly encourage the Senate to ratify the treaty and for Congress to implement the <a href="http://www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/ip-policy/copyright/legislative-implementation-documents">minor legislative changes</a> recommended as part of the package.<br />
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We know a great deal about this Treaty, which is designed to help people who are blind or have other disabilities that interfere with reading, such as dyslexia. Our nonprofit organization operates <a href="https://www.bookshare.org/cms">Bookshare</a>, the largest online library in the world that focuses on the needs of people with these disabilities. The creation of Bookshare was made possible because of an enlightened copyright law exception. And, that American copyright exception was the inspiration for the Marrakesh Treaty!<br />
<br />
Because the Marrakesh Treaty was modeled after the Chafee Amendment, as the Section 121 copyright exception is widely known in honor of the senator who proposed it in 1996, only minor changes have been recommended to align U.S. law with the Treaty language. As the operators of the largest library using this exception in the United States, we see these changes as minor and helpful clarifications. We do not see these changes as having a major impact on who we serve in the U.S., or the work we do.
Here are the three changes of note:<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>Clarifying the definition of a disability that qualifies.</b> 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. While we already serve many people with dyslexia, or returning veterans with traumatic brain injuries, these changes will be remove much of the confusion that exists in the field because of ambiguous, older language. </li>
<li><b>Including illustrations as part of books to be made accessible.</b> We include illustrations in our accessible books because many of our users can see them. People who are low vision can usually magnify pictures to see them better, and our dyslexic users often get much more out of illustrations than they get out of text. We often add image descriptions to illustrations, as well as supporting partners developing tactile versions of illustrations today, to further improve accessibility. </li>
<li><b>Serving U.S. citizens abroad under Section 121 as if they lived in the U.S.</b> This question has also been unclear, and different libraries have treated this inconsistently. Our default setting in Bookshare has been to treat an American with a disability living in another country as being only allowed the books we have permission to provide there, which leaves out over 100,000 titles that are only available inside the United States to Americans. This change would allow us to better serve American overseas.</li>
</ol>
These three changes clarify Section 121 in minor ways that are quite helpful to Americans with disabilities.<br />
<br />
Of course, the biggest change that the Marrakesh Treaty makes is easing the import and export of accessible books. This cross-border exchange will make the lives of people with these disabilities better worldwide, as we reduce needless duplication of effort. Americans with disabilities will have access to far more accessible books, especially in languages other than English. And, it will become possible for nonprofit organizations such as ours to help bring accessible books to people with disabilities in developing countries, often the poorest of the world’s poor, who have mostly lacked access to books entirely.<br />
<br />
We’re excited about the prospect of Marrakesh ratification and implementation by the United States to make our work more straightforward in serving Americans with bona fide disabilities the books they need for education, employment, and social inclusion, as well as lowering the barriers to serve people around the world with similar needs!
</div>
Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08214396954972460844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-88739238778902304712016-03-01T06:56:00.000-08:002016-03-01T06:56:41.293-08:00Silicon Valley’s Developing Conscience: It’s Called Apple<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Silicon Valley has a problem. In our quest to build better products and better meet the needs of the world for information, we built the most amazing system for effortless government surveillance as a byproduct. It is now incumbent on Silicon Valley to remedy this situation.<br />
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Forcing tech companies to weaken their products through compelling the creation of backdoors would be a massive step backwards.
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Whatever the power of search engines or social networks, it’s really the smartphone that is the most incredible tool for tracking our every move and activity. With access to the information collected by a person’s smartphone, it’s probably straightforward to figure out everything important about that person. Who they love. What religion they profess. Their ethnicity. What drugs (legal or illegal) they consume. What content they read or watch. What laws they violate. Every secret.
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<br />
And, without encryption of this information, the makers of smartphones had effectively handed those secrets to governments. Not just the U.S. government. Just about every government. For very little expense compared to other ways of gathering secrets.
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<br />
Over the last couple of years, Apple figured out the implications of this expanded surveillance. They decided that their value proposition to smartphone users did not include making it easy for governments (or others) to collect everybody’s secrets.
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<br />
As a society, Americans have frequently decided to put limits on our government’s powers, because we were founded in a period where government abused its powers extensively. We don’t allow our police to torture suspects for confessions. We throw out evidence gathered through illegal searches. The government does not, and should not, have automatic access to every secret.
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<br />
The battle between Apple and the FBI is one of those crucial limit-setting moments. And Silicon Valley understands it as such a moment for the tech industry generally. If the FBI can force Apple to construct a back door for one iPhone for the U.S. government, we techies understand why this sets a strong negative precedent for extensive surveillance in the U.S. and globally.
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This is not a theoretical problem. We have seen this problem here in the United States and around the world. My nonprofit creates the Martus software for human rights activists to securely store their sensitive information (via encryption). It may be documentation of atrocities they plan to use in later advocacy, or simply items like current membership lists. When we called an LGBT organization in Africa last year for a regular check-in, we found that they took the call from the back yard of their offices. They were burning all of their records because they had a tip that their government was going to raid them. Luckily, their records were already safely stored in Martus. Without a backdoor for that government, or any government for that matter.<br />
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As a society, we should not make it easy for governments or other interests to get lists of all of the gay people, or Christians, or Muslims, or rape survivors, or HIV positive people, or supporters of the opposition. We need to make it harder to find out our sensitive personal information, whether it’s our medical information, or when our 11-year-old child is home alone. And encryption without backdoors is how we secure that information against attackers of all stripes. A backdoor is an open door for any one that’s willing to try hard enough to gain entry.<br />
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That is why we, and so much of the technology sector, stand with Apple today. This is not a tradeoff between security and privacy, as this issue is so often portrayed. This is a tradeoff between <a href="https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2016/02/security_vs_surveill.html">security of our sensitive information and surveillance</a>. And, making it easier to surveille us by weakening the technical protections on our private information makes it possible for governments, especially repressive ones, and others to exploit a user’s or organization’s vulnerabilities.<br />
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We should not be able to compel software developers to sabotage security protections that they carefully built for excellent reasons. We should not compel them to work against the interests of us, their users.
</div>
Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08214396954972460844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-72765641559074832342016-02-24T07:50:00.000-08:002016-02-24T07:50:21.892-08:00Understanding Income Inequality<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Data is a bigger and bigger topic in social change. We need to do a better job of understanding social needs, both to improve our programs and measure their ultimate impact. I spend more and more of my time talking to leaders in the sector, helping advance the use of data for action and impact.<br />
<br />
I encourage groups to begin collecting data as part of their basic program activities, and I make the claim that it will eventually allow them to connect their data to other, larger databases and maybe begin to take advantage of big data. <br />
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Imagine how my mind has been blown by learning about a huge international income database that has microdata on millions of households from more than 50 countries, all harmonized to make the same kinds of analyses possible across any of these countries! This database should be critically important for understanding poverty at a detailed level. <br />
<br />
I just had the thrill of spending an hour with Janet Gornick, the Director of LIS, an international data archive that is located in Luxembourg. LIS is the institute that created and manages this giant database, which is called the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) Database. I met her last year at <a href="https://kentpresents.org/">KentPresents</a>, a brand-new conference organized by the incredible duo of Ben and Donna Rosen. <br />
<br />
Janet is also a professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), and she runs a <a href="http://www.gc.cuny.edu/liscenter">satellite office of LIS there</a>. Her group in New York includes Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman and renowned inequality scholar Branko Milanovic. I asked her what kind of insights could be gleaned by an anti-poverty group, say in Uruguay (to pick one country out of 50), accessing the LIS. She suggested:<br />
<br />
In Uruguay:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>What is the poverty rate among individuals and households (using any of a number of poverty lines – absolute or relative, national or regional)?</li>
<li>What does the distribution of poverty look like, that is, what share of the population is extremely poor, poor, and/or near-poor?</li>
<li>Which individuals and households are most at risk – the youngest children, all children, women, the elderly? single-adult households, multi-generational households?</li>
<li>What “micro” factors raise the poverty risk for persons and households – age? family structure? employment attachment and educational level of adult household members? other? </li>
<li>Have the answers to these questions changed during recent years (2007, 2010, 2013)? </li>
</ul>
In cross-national perspective:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>How do these outcomes in Uruguay compare with those in 50 other middle- and high-income countries (including several in Latin America)? Which outcomes/patterns are unusual? Which are widespread? </li>
<li>How do national-level demographic and labor market features shape the Uruguayan outcomes, in comparative perspective?</li>
<li>Which national-level public institutions (e.g., government anti-poverty programs, income transfers more generally, taxation) help to explain the Uruguayan results? </li>
</ul>
In short, working with the LIS data would enable this Uruguayan anti-poverty group to better understand the causes and components of poverty in Uruguay, which – in turn – would enable them to think more specifically about a range of intervention strategies. <br />
<br />
Wow! Now, it turns out that this database has been made available under careful limitations to a select group of researchers. There are special constraints to ensure that database queries don’t accidentally reveal personal information about individuals, since that is part of convincing all of these different countries to supply this detailed microdata about household in their country. <br />
<br />
Janet and her team get asked all the time to answer questions that the database could help answer, especially around income inequality. And, they often have to decline to help because of limited staff resources. Janet named some very well-known international publications that they had to disappoint in the last year. <br />
<br />
Luckily, Janet and her team have an idea for how far more people could benefit from this database. For less than a million dollars on top of their existing funding, they could build an online portal so that researchers, journalists, policymakers, students and the general public could run their own queries on the LIS data. <br />
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Something tells me that this is definitely fundable. I am happy to help advocate that donors take a serious look at funding Janet and LIS make this happen. And if it does, we’ll have a major new tool for combating income inequality and poverty in much of the world! </div>
Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08214396954972460844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-4839715405502641302016-02-21T12:40:00.003-08:002016-02-21T12:40:37.887-08:00Mary Robinson<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Thanks to being a Skoll Award winner, I am frequently blessed with the opportunity to hear from the world’s most inspiring leaders. Whether it’s local in California, or at the Skoll World Forum in Oxford, there is a regular chance I will have my mind expanded.<br />
<br />
The latest Skoll opportunity came along with the recent visit of <a href="http://theelders.org/mary-robinson">Mary Robinson</a> to Palo Alto. She hit the world stage most notably as Ireland’s first female president, and has continued to campaign for the world’s most vulnerable people, especially women.<br />
<br />
Mary spoke privately to a small group of social sector leaders at the Skoll Foundation offices. I want to share just two insights from Mary that made a big impression on me.<br />
<br />
First, she saw 2015 as having two watershed events. The first was the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations. These goals commit all countries of the world to make progress on critical social objectives, such as ending poverty and hunger, improving access to clean water, education, and gender equality, as well as a dozen others. The second was the Paris Agreement on climate. She saw this incredible combination as a watershed moment in global history. She sees the two events as inextricably linked: we need to strongly move forward on our social developmental objectives while protecting the planet. She was disappointed that a bigger deal wasn’t made at the beginning of 2016 recognizing the dawning of this new global era!<br />
<br />
Second, she talked about key dates in our climate goals. The headline goal of the Paris Agreement is to ensure that global temperature rise by 2100 is no more than two degree Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). That date always seemed like a long way off. Mary made the climate change goals of 2100 tangible in a deeply personal way. She explained that that the grandchildren of the people sitting around the table were highly likely to be alive in 2100. As someone who doesn’t currently have grandchildren, but hopes to in the next ten years, this really hit home. Children being born today should have every expectation of living on average at least 84 years!<br />
<br />
This is where the voices of <a href="http://theelders.org/">Elders</a> like Mary Robinson are especially powerful: awakening insights and inspiring action from all of us. I look forward to the next time I have a Skoll moment (maybe with the Dalai Lama in Oxford this spring?)! </div>
Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08214396954972460844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-89728509287154095122016-02-03T16:43:00.001-08:002016-02-03T16:43:43.193-08:00Commercial Availability: The Poison Pill for Marrakesh Treaty Implementation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
If you can buy a book, you can’t borrow it. </blockquote>
<br />
That’s the lobbying position of some companies in the intellectual property field when implementing the new Marrakesh Copyright Treaty. Marrakesh is intended to end the book famine for people who can’t read regular books because of their disability. Libraries for people who are blind or dyslexic are the primary source of accessible books in audio, large print or braille. But, some companies want to empty the library shelves and insist that only books that can’t be purchased are allowed to be stocked in such libraries. Imagine what a regular library would look like if it couldn’t stock books that could be purchased by the general public! That would pretty much defeat the purpose of having a library.<br />
<br />
As the founder of the largest library for people who are blind or who have other significant disabilities that prevent them from reading printed texts (such as dyslexia or brain injuries), I think this is a terrible idea. Since people with disabilities tend to be the poorest of the poor, it seems odd to campaign to hobble libraries that serve only this community. Wouldn’t it make more sense to make it easier for people with disabilities to get access to the books they need for education and employment?<br />
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In this post, I hope to convincingly make the case why countries ratifying the Marrakesh Treaty should implement copyright exceptions for people with disabilities which do not have these self-clearing provisions, technically called “commercial availability limitations.” Our experience successfully building Bookshare under the United States copyright exception, which has no such commercial availability limitation, informs this strong opinion. My position rests on three pillars: the moral case, the economic case, and the practical case.<br />
<br />
Countries implementing the Marrakesh Treaty, might benefit from hearing the experience of other countries which have already put such copyright exceptions into place. I hope they follow the lead of the great majority of these countries and allow libraries serving that community to be fully stocked with the needed accessible books!<br />
<h2>
The Bookshare Library Experience</h2>
I am the CEO of Benetech, the nonprofit organization that provides the world’s largest online collection of accessible books, for people with disabilities that interfere with reading, through our Bookshare library. Bookshare was created under the Section 121 U.S. copyright exception, which was one of the inspirations for the Marrakesh Treaty.<br />
<br />
The Bookshare promise to American students with disabilities is that if they need a book for education, Bookshare will ensure that they have it. Under our copyright exception, we simply buy a copy of the needed print book, scan it using optical character recognition, and create an accessible ebook. These ebooks can be instantly turned into the accessible format needed by the student with a disability, such as braille, enlarged print, or our most common format, audio through a computerized synthetic voice. We don’t have to ask for permission from the publisher or author. We don’t have to research questions of commercial availability, affordability, or format availability. We simply act to ensure the person who needs an accessible book can get it.<br />
<br />
As an organization that puts this disability-specific copyright exception into practice, I can say with confidence that the U.S. exception model works well here. We go to great lengths to ensure the digital works we provide are restricted to bona fide patrons with disabilities. Over 350,000 American patrons now download more than a million accessible books and periodicals each year!<br />
<br />
And while the publishing industry was skittish about Bookshare’s library at first, now more than 500 publishers are our partners, directly providing over 80% of the 5,000 books we add to our collection each month. Publishers, representing the majority of top trade and educational books, have already voluntarily provided, for free, more than half of the 385,000 books in the Bookshare collection.<br />
<br />
Together with these enlightened publisher partners, our nonprofit has been able to effectively end the book famine in the United States for people with disabilities that affect the reading of print.<br />
<h2>
The Moral Case</h2>
<br />
The Marrakesh Treaty is a human rights treaty in an intellectual property framework. Its primary goal is to end the book famine for people with disabilities, ensuring that they have access to the materials they need for education, employment, and social inclusion. Assisting the blind has been a moral imperative for societies and religions since ancient times. With the advances in publishing and technology, it is now within reach to ensure equal access to books for all.<br />
<br />
The Marrakesh Treaty was designed to address the biggest remaining obstacle: the existing system of providing books to society did not meet the needs of people with disabilities. The commercial publishing industry isn’t selling accessible books, and the cost to obtain permissions to produce accessible editions of print books effectively discouraged the social sector from doing more than a token amount of accessible book production in the great majority of countries in the world. And thus we have a book famine, where the typical blind person in the world has no accessible books, and depends on the charity of others to read books aloud.<br />
<br />
In the face of such denial of access to information, a copyright exception that makes it possible for the charitable sector to serve these needs makes great sense. However, saying that libraries that serve people who are blind or otherwise disabled when it comes to reading print are barred from lending books when it is possible for someone to purchase that book does not make moral sense. Why destroy the ability of libraries to serve some of the most economically disadvantaged in our communities first? This is capitalism at its least admirable.
That is the essence of the moral case for a copyright exception. It enables the realization of the right to read. It has a minimal impact on the financial interests of the publishing industry. And it is within our reach.<br />
<h2>
The Economic Case</h2>
We shouldn’t put the economic interests of publishers ahead of the human rights of people with disabilities. This is especially true when the long-term economic interests of publishers are better served when potential purchasers of books have the best chance at an education and employment through access to knowledge.<br />
<br />
Our experience in the United States has shown that economically empowered people with disabilities tend to be voracious readers and active purchasers of accessible audio books and ebooks. But that is because we have a robust copyright exception in the United States that ensures that people who are disabled have equal access to all of the books they need from accessible libraries. They are just like people without disabilities who depend on libraries if they are poor, and generally prefer to purchase books when they have the capacity.<br />
<br />
One of the top three advocacy positions in the United States of both the National Federation of the Blind and of my organization is campaigning for greater accessibility of commercial electronic books. Our motto is “If it’s born digital, it should be born accessible!” This may seem counterintuitive: why would organizations that so strongly support a copyright exception without commercial availability limitations fight for commercial availability? Fundamentally, it’s about equality. People with disabilities should both be able to use libraries on terms similar to those of people without disabilities, and be able to purchase books that work for them. But, we strongly object to removing the safety net of an effective copyright exception in the United States while we are still early in the born accessibility campaign.<br />
<h2>
The Practical Case</h2>
Charity provision is done on a shoestring. Government funding is slim, and not available in most of the world. Rights clearance and research is expensive: it’s a big reason we don’t have the books people with disabilities need in most of the world.
As Bookshare, we believe we can find money to extend the availability of our collection globally to the poor. Richer countries like the U.S., Canada, and the UK all fund our work, with a focus on serving their citizens. But these countries have no objection to helping others with the results of that work.<br />
<br />
A key provision of the Marrakesh Treaty is easing the import and export of accessible books among countries implementing the treaty. The leverage here is ensuring that our patrons benefit from the sum of global efforts to make accessible books, rather than recreating the same titles over and over again.<br />
<br />
This, of course, was the founding idea of our Bookshare library: scanning a book once and then making it available to all the people who need it. And we’re now making this happen in countries beyond the United States who, like India, have implemented Marrakesh without commercial limitation provisions. We now have volunteers throughout India adding local language titles such as Tamil into Bookshare.<br />
<br />
But, in countries with a “commercial availability” limitation, it doesn’t work very well there. Charities fret about whether they might get in trouble. They don’t touch important titles, denying access to people <i>with</i> disabilities to the books in great demand from people <i>without </i>disabilities.<br />
<br />
As Bookshare, we won’t touch the books needed in those countries. We have no effective ability to research availability and don’t want to risk our services in our home country, which is paying for over 95% of our work. We are delighted to serve books to Canadians with disabilities today, but we only serve up books where we have publisher permissions. This works well for English language titles in demand in both countries, but not for Canadian specific titles, especially in French.<br />
<br />
Marrakesh allowed for the possibility of commercial limitation (though it does not mandate it) because a handful of countries, generally wealthy ones such as Canada, had these provisions in their domestic copyright exception, and they needed to be accommodated. But, this is a poor model for fully addressing the book famine and one that shouldn’t be emulated, especially in the international context of the Marrakesh Treaty. This is especially true of developing countries without the means to fully fund these efforts and financially accommodate publishers for the ability to serve people with these disabilities.
<br />
<h2>
Conclusion</h2>
The language a few publishers and other intellectual property lobbyists are pushing for in the laws being devised to implement the Treaty—including the “if you can buy a book, you can’t borrow it” concept—could mean the end to libraries as we know them. It would severely undercut the traditional role libraries play in serving those who simply cannot afford to purchase books. Imagine a person using the library to do research or a school project—someone who needs to look at ten or twenty books, but doesn’t want to buy them—they’d be out of luck. And, if we start requiring people with disabilities to buy books rather than borrowing them from libraries, who’s next on the list? Ripping books out of the hands of those who need them most—whether it’s from our Bookshare library or from your local library—is simply unconscionable.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, it doesn’t make economic or practical sense. Publishers will be better off in the long term if people with disabilities have better access to educational and economic opportunities. People with disabilities are the most logical customers for digital ebooks. We need to drive to a future where those people who can afford books easily can, and those that cannot are not denied access to this critically important content.<br />
<br />
As your country moves to implement the Marrakesh Treaty for all the good and wonderful reasons of helping people who are blind or have other disabilities that interfere with reading print, please advocate for a copyright exception without the poison pill of limiting this law to books that cannot be purchased. If we can do that together, we will advance the cause of ending the book famine, and providing far better opportunities for people who need accessible books the most, and are least able to afford them.
</div>
Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08214396954972460844noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-65030867999638439372016-01-05T08:36:00.000-08:002016-01-05T08:36:08.379-08:00Benetech: the Equilibrium Change Machine<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I just read the new book from Sally Osberg, President and CEO of the Skoll Foundation, and strategy guru Roger Martin, Getting Beyond Better: How Social Entrepreneurship Works. Even though I’m a Skoll Award winner, it really made me think about my organization, Benetech, and what we are trying to accomplish.
The book is an expanded version of their seminal article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review from 2007, “Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition.” I always refer aspiring social entrepreneurs to the article when they ask me how they can win a Skoll Award. But, it’s always useful to explore the framework of one’s work. Sally and Roger's book challenged me to do just that. <br />
<h4>
Framework for Producing Transformative Change</h4>
Two key concepts from the book really stuck with me. The first is their core concept of equilibrium change. Did the world move from one stable but unjust equilibrium to a new and better one? Of course, this is a familiar concept to me as someone who started his career building for-profit tech companies in Silicon Valley. The primary goal in the Valley is massive change, because when you’re a for-profit that magnitude usually yields massive profits. Whether it’s Microsoft transforming the PC software industry, or Google or Facebook, it’s clear that the world is different because these companies exist. The difference is that the social entrepreneur pursues change at scale primarily as a tool for social justice, not private enrichment.<br />
<br />
That’s the group the Skoll Foundation wants to invest in: social entrepreneurs driving large-scale change.<br />
<br />
The second key concept explores what a social entrepreneur is and isn’t. The authors present a two-by-two matrix. One axis represents nature of action: direct or indirect. The other axis represents systems change: does the world work better and differently now as a result of these efforts? <br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RFreUp6iwvk/Vnn5JiROSRI/AAAAAAAAB4A/vEtY0tO9SqU/s1600/Equilibrium%2BChange%2BModel.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="2 by 2 matrix. Y axis is Nature of Action (Direct and Indirect); X axis is Outcome (Extant systems maintened and approved and New equilibrium created and maintained). Direct/Extant System box is "social service provision"; Direct/New Equilibrium box is Social Entrepreneurship. Indirect/Extant System box is empty; Indirect/New Equilibrium box is Social Activism." border="0" height="345" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RFreUp6iwvk/Vnn5JiROSRI/AAAAAAAAB4A/vEtY0tO9SqU/s400/Equilibrium%2BChange%2BModel.png" title="Pure forms of social engagement" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Credit: Martin, Roger L. and Osberg, Sally R., Osberg & Martin, Getting Beyond
Better: How
Social Entrepreneurship Works, 2015.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
They put Martin Luther King in one box: the world-changing activist who accomplished large-scale change through indirect means. They put most nonprofits in the direct action without systems change box: groups that do a good (or even excellent) job of delivering services under the existing system. They then place social entrepreneurs in the direct action and systems change box. Basically, social entrepreneurs get stuff done at scale and they change the world to boot!<br />
<br />
This is not to say that social entrepreneurs don’t work in the policy and advocacy space. But, we generally play in that space based on our credibility as operators of social change at scale first. Rather than just telling people how the world needs to improve, the successful social entrepreneur demonstrates how to do it.<br />
<br />
I read the Osberg/Martin book just prior to a major Benetech planning meeting. We were trying to analyze the Benetech secret sauce: how do we go about changing the world for the better as Silicon Valley’s deliberately nonprofit tech company? The team laid out the figure below:<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qDJ1lVgPN5c/VoG7hakaHYI/AAAAAAAAB4Q/ahYmzFilZaU/s1600/Benetech-equilibrium-model.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Three boxes in a circle where one box leads to the next. Starts with Thought Leadership; leads next to Incubation & Innovation; leads then to Operation at Scale; and finally returns to Thought Leadership--where it begins anew." border="0" height="174" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qDJ1lVgPN5c/VoG7hakaHYI/AAAAAAAAB4Q/ahYmzFilZaU/s320/Benetech-equilibrium-model.png" title="" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Benetech's Equilibrium Change Model
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Looking at this summary of how Benetech operates, it was clear to me that our theory of change matched the framework from Osberg and Martin. We pick projects that have the potential for large-scale change: can we deliver something for a tenth of the cost of the existing solution? If cost benchmarking doesn’t make sense (as in the field of human rights), can we dramatically change the way people operate in a given area?
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<h4>
Equilibrium Change According to Benetech</h4>
Benetech is an engine for equilibrium change, and we’ve done it over and over again. Replicating this change at scale in multiple fields is what makes Benetech so unique in the social innovation field. We don’t pick a single area of focus. The common link among our projects is information technology, which can be applied to just about every aspect of the social sector. One of our insights is that so much of social change is about pushing around information. Yet, nonprofits frequently lag behind the for-profit world in applying technology to their work. Benetech has a unique opportunity to repeatedly use technology as a social change agent. Let me share some of the ways we have done it and are working today to do it again.<br />
<h5>
From Arkenstone to Bookshare</h5>
The field of access to books by blind people is where Benetech has twice been the key engine of positive equilibrium change at scale, and we are already working on the third change. Before Benetech was founded, blind people were read to either in person by a family member, volunteer, or paid reader, or via audio cassette tape. Blind people were dependent on sighted people for access to books. And, because of the high cost of human narration, very few books were available this way.<br />
<br />
Benetech’s original project was the Arkenstone Reader, the first affordable reading machine for the blind. We provided a tool that blind individuals could use to scan and read their own books independently. The Arkenstone reading tools became a key mode of independent access to books. As long as you were willing to invest the two to four hours to scan that book page by page, you could read just about any book, article, or piece of mail that you wanted to read.<br />
<br />
This was the first equilibrium change: before, blind people were read to; after, blind people scanned and read what they wanted independently. This kind of technology is now a standard part of the toolkit of blind people in the wealthier countries of the world.<br />
<br />
Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen set forth the “Innovator’s Dilemma” which states that companies that have accomplished great change are reluctant to adopt the next disruptive innovation because of its impact on the existing successful business. However, as nonprofit social entrepreneurs, we don’t worry about unhappy shareholders. We are more interested in improving the world than maintaining the status quo. We can just blow up the old model while striving for the next phase of equilibrium change.<br />
<br />
In our case, we sold the Arkenstone reading machine enterprise to a for-profit and used money from the sale (and funding from the Skoll Foundation, the Omidyar Network, and the Jenesis Foundation) to create and launch Bookshare. Being based in Silicon Valley, we have the benefit of seeing the future being invented constantly. As the author William Gibson famously noted, “The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.” In the case of the social sector, the odds that the use of technology is ten or twenty years behind Silicon Valley are high. As a result, we have lots of opportunities to borrow technology and business model breakthroughs and apply them to social change. And that’s what we did with Bookshare!<br />
<br />
The Bookshare breakthrough depended on three innovations. The first was the ebook. Fundamentally, the Arkenstone Reader allowed blind people to create their own personal ebook as a text file that could be read in something like Microsoft Word. By the time of Bookshare’s creation in 2001, new and better XML digital book formats had been developed. These formats now underpin the ebook industry of today. The second innovation was crowdsourcing. It wasn’t a term in use in 2001, but the Napster peer-to-peer model of information distribution was the inspiration for Bookshare. Instead of providing a scanning tool for independent reading, Bookshare would aggregate the scanning activity of the entire community. Instead of thousands of people each scanning the new Harry Potter title, one person would scan it, one person would proofread it, and tens of thousands of people would get it through an online software service. Third, we pioneered a novel interpretation of the copyright exception for serving people with disabilities that is built into the basic law of the United States. Although it had never been created with crowd sourcing in mind, the Bookshare concept fit the existing exception like a glove.<br />
<br />
Fast forward to today. In the United States, if a person who is blind or dyslexic receives a book suggestion from a friend, the odds that the book is available in Bookshare are probably over ninety percent. And, Bookshare’s promise to K-12 students with these kinds of disabilities is that if they need specific titles for school, we’ll get them. Once we do that, those titles will now be instantly available to the over 350,000 Americans with print disabilities who are already Bookshare members.<br />
So, in the United States, Benetech created a second equilibrium change. Instead of being read to, or using a tool to independently create their own accessible book in a few hours, a person with a visual impairment or dyslexia can access a book in seconds, which happens to be very close to the experience of a sighted ebook reader.<br />
<h5>
Born Accessible: The Final Frontier</h5>
Which brings us to our third phase: the one we have started but not yet completed. Bookshare is terrific, but it’s fundamentally a separate system where a specialized library becomes the primary source of books for its patrons. So, how might we accomplish even greater equality and put Bookshare mostly out of business?<br />
<br />
Enter the Born Accessible movement. Benetech’s President, Betsy Beaumon, coined the motto: “If it’s born digital, it should be Born Accessible!” Our vision is that the same ebooks available through mass channels like the Amazon Kindle or the Apple iPad should be fully accessible. Through adding accessibility features to ebooks that are critically needed by people with disabilities, and helpful to many other people, we envision a world where all commercial ebooks work effectively for the community we serve. Right now we are successfully convincing major educational publishers to build accessibility features into their standard ebooks.
<br />
<h5>
Bookshare Across Borders</h5>
Interestingly enough, while we’re busy trying to make Bookshare obsolete in the United States, we’re reaching out to the developed world to help engineer an accelerated equilibrium change for people with disabilities. We want to leapfrog the current unjust equilibrium (blind people are read to, but mostly not) to a new place where the widespread availability of cheap mobile phones and MP3 players can be harnessed. But, to make that happen, we need to recreate the favorable copyright policy environment we enjoy in the United States. And so we campaigned for the Marrakesh Treaty. This breakthrough instrument was negotiated in 2013 and has now been signed by over eighty countries. It makes a copyright exception like the U.S. one a global norm and allows for easy import and export of accessible materials.<br />
<br />
Benetech didn’t accomplish all of this equilibrium change on our own. Others played key roles in conceiving important elements, frequently before we recognized them. The difference was our ability to leverage these powerful ideas into social change at scale by becoming the most dominant reading machine maker and then the largest online library for people with print disabilities. Putting these ideas for social change into action is a key part of the Osberg/Martin definition of social entrepreneurship. Our Silicon Valley tech community roots give us an inside track on technology and business model change. We believe that our track record demonstrates how to drive this kind of equilibrium change repeatedly.<br />
<h4>
Advancing Human Rights and Conservation</h4>
Although Benetech was founded in the accessibility field, our success in equilibrium change is not limited to helping people with disabilities. In the human rights field, we have been part of major shifts in practice. The first is in using data at scale to influence the human rights debate. Benetech’s Human Rights Program played a key role in making data a critically important part of the human rights debate. Our team believed that better data would lead to better policy and maybe even justice for the victims of large-scale atrocities. Benetech successfully spun off our data team as the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, an independent NGO. Whether it’s accurately reporting the number of people killed in Syria or explaining why the FBI’s count of American police killings is significantly underestimated, data is finally influencing the policy debate.<br />
<br />
Benetech was also the first group to bring usable cryptography to the human rights field. Now, almost fifteen years later (and post-Snowden!), everybody in the field of social justice understands that governments are probably spying on them. It’s now the norm when developing software for collecting sensitive human rights data that it be encrypted to secure this information from other parties. We’re about to announce another advance which is designed to make it incredibly easy for human rights and social justice groups to have their own secure apps for collecting data about human rights issues. This means that LGBTI groups in Africa, Tibetan groups in exile, indigenous groups in Latin America, and activists fighting gender-based violence globally will all have better and more secure tools in 2016.<br />
<br />
Benetech also supported data-based equilibrium change in yet another field: environmental project management. We were the toolmakers to the “results-based management” movement in conservation by developing Miradi, adaptive management software for conservation projects. Using the best practices in science and activism, Miradi brought business-like project management tools to conservation. In this case, the equilibrium change was primarily conceived of by our partners in the conservation movement, and our job was to build the technology that advanced this change. We are eagerly seeking our next opportunity to make this kind of impact around climate change and sustainability.
<br />
<h4>
Conclusion</h4>
I thank Sally and Roger for a book that did more than just make me muse on the coolness of social entrepreneurship, but gave me a better framework for both where Benetech has been, and more importantly, where we’re going. I sincerely hope it inspires other social entrepreneurs to think even more ambitiously about social change at scale.
</div>
Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08214396954972460844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-36954096047011611372015-12-17T10:28:00.005-08:002015-12-17T10:32:57.201-08:00Why Your Country Should Ratify the Marrakesh Treaty<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Access to information and knowledge is
a basic human right and a necessary first step towards personal, economic, and social development. Yet around the world, over 100 million individuals are denied this basic right. They include people who are blind, visually impaired, have dyslexia, or have a physical disability that prevents them from reading regular printed books. The good news is that there are now unprecedented
opportunities to transform the lives of these millions by removing barriers of
access to information </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">—</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">and this is where you can help.</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4RASLXiweJs/VnLorBk0-fI/AAAAAAAAB30/DrFuxKpb-v8/s1600/US-Delegation-Signing-Marrakesh-Treaty-200x205.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4RASLXiweJs/VnLorBk0-fI/AAAAAAAAB30/DrFuxKpb-v8/s1600/US-Delegation-Signing-Marrakesh-Treaty-200x205.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chief negotiator Justin Hughes and the<br />
U.S. delegation signing the treaty. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The international legal landscape for
people with these disabilities dramatically changed on June 28, 2013, when the
World Intellectual Property Organization adopted the </span><span style="color: blue; font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/marrakesh/" target="_blank">Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled</a></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">.
This historic international copyright exception treaty paves the way for a
future in which people who cannot read regular printed materials can have equal
access to books, regardless of where they live. There is still much to do,
however, before the treaty takes full effect.</span></div>
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</div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As the nonprofit operator of </span><a href="http://www.bookshare.org/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue; font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Bookshare</span></a><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">,the world’s largest online library for people who are blind, visually impaired, dyslexic, or have a physical disability that prevents them from reading books, </span><a href="http://www.benetech.org/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue; font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Benetech</span><span style="color: blue; font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> </span></a><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">strongly recommends the ratification
of the Marrakesh Treaty.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Here’s why the Marrakesh Treaty is so
important and why your country can help ensure it benefits the millions who
need it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.25pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What Does the Marrakesh Treaty Do?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">The World Blind Union's </span><a href="http://www.worldblindunion.org/english/our-work/our-priorities/pages/right-2-read-campaign.aspx" style="font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;" target="_blank">Right to Read Campaign</a><span style="font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;"> estimates that less than ten percent of all books published are available in accessible formats such as braille, large print, and audio talking books. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">The Marrakesh Treaty makes it
easier for nonprofits, schools, government agencies, and individuals with
disabilities to convert inaccessible print books into accessible equivalents.
It does so by making it legal under copyright to create accessible books
without needing to seek permission or (in most countries) paying a royalty. It
also allows for the import and export of such accessible books across
international borders.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.25pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">How Does the Treaty Help My
Country?</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 10.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It
remedies the book famine faced by people who are blind or have another
disability that prevents them from reading books, improving their access to
education, employment, and social inclusion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 8.75pt; margin-left: 18.8pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 10.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It
supports international human rights treaty commitments, especially the UN
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 8.75pt; margin-left: 18.8pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 10.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It
supports the Sustainable Development Goals, which mention inclusiveness
repeatedly, especially in the context of education.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 10.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 10.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It
supports domestic human and civil rights laws around access to information and
education.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 10.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It
greatly lowers the cost of providing accessible books by both easing domestic
efforts as well as by opening up existing accessible book collections in other
countries (either regionally or large worldwide English libraries, such
as </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">Bookshare</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’s collection of 375,000+ titles).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 10.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It
helps hasten the development of a domestic electronic book industry in your
country, since ebooks are one core format for providing accessible books.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 8.75pt; margin-left: 18.8pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 10.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It is
politically popular. Helping people with disabilities gain access to education
and books is a cause everyone can identify with. Most people know someone who
might benefit from books that talk.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 18.8pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 10.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
publishing industry has come out in favor of the treaty.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.25pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">How You Can Help<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Benetech is happy to support the World
Blind Union in its campaign for the Marrakesh Treaty ratification and
implementation. Check out the </span><a href="http://www.worldblindunion.org/english/our-work/our-priorities/pages/right-2-read-campaign.aspx" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue; font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">World Blind Union’s resources</span></a><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> for getting
involved with efforts to advance the Treaty’s ratification in your country. We
also recommend that you coordinate with your national association of the blind
as you consider ratification. Please join us in ending the accessible book
famine facing the world’s blind population. Advocate for your country to ratify
Marrakesh!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08214396954972460844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-81817545041123876692015-12-13T20:27:00.000-08:002015-12-13T20:27:01.367-08:00A Worthy Read: National Education Technology Plan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I just finished reading the <a href="http://tech.ed.gov/netp/">National Education Technology Plan</a>, and I can recommend it to anyone interested in the future of technology in American education. <br />
<br />
These kinds of plans can be impenetrable, but I found this one quite readable and understandable. It is full of examples of interesting ed tech from for-profits and nonprofits, as well as local, state and federal government agencies. I found the explanations good, and the first part of the plan is well worth reading to understand some of the trends in educational applications of technology.<br />
<br />
Of course, one thing might be that accessibility is put right up top, front and center! I liked this quote:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In addition to enabling students with disabilities to use content and
participate in activities, the concepts also apply to accommodating the
individual learning needs of students, such as English language
learners, students in rural communities, or students from economically
disadvantaged homes. </blockquote>
Universal design gets a lot of well-deserved attention, and I was positively delighted by the plug for born accessible:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<strong>Education stakeholders should develop a born accessible standard
of learning resource design to help educators select and evaluate
learning resources for accessibility and equity of learning experience.</strong>
Born accessible is a play on the term born digital and is used to convey
the idea that materials that are born digital also can and should be
born accessible. If producers adopt current industry standards for
producing educational materials, materials will be accessible out of the
box. </blockquote>
So, there's a lot to like in there for me and our campaign for greater accessibility built into future educational technology and content! </div>
Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08214396954972460844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-35485229095258434362015-11-24T15:27:00.002-08:002015-11-24T15:27:42.199-08:00Mr. Jim Goes to Washington (and New York, and Nairobi, and Seoul, and Kampala, and Boston…) <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
Like many other leaders of nonprofit organizations, I travel an unreasonable fraction of the time. I recently hit three million lifetime miles on American Airlines. Not sure whether to celebrate or mourn this milestone.<br />
Why do I do it? Why do my peers do it? We know that the carbon impact of all that travel is bad for the planet, and the personal impact of all that travel is bad on our bodies. <br />
We travel because we think it’s the most effective way to spread social change. We travel because there is no substitute for human interaction. We travel because we need to raise money, and we won’t get it unless we get in front of the donors.<br />
For the more senior social entrepreneurs, we can travel because we have leaders and teams that are usually better than we are at running the organizations we head and/or have founded. We travel because it‘s the best use of our time in finding the partnerships, insights, and the money our teams need to create more social change. Lastly, we travel to advocate for the world to change, from a position of authority based on the change our organizations are already delivering.<br />
That’s my theory, and I’m sticking to it. However, I thought I’d back up the theory with a brief picture of what this kind of travel looks like in practice. When I travel, I write up detailed notes on who I meet with and what we discussed. After all, if we’re going to invest all of that time and money sending me places, Benetech better get its social good bang for the buck. So, let me tell you about a seven week travel jag I recently completed, where I spent almost 70% of the nights not at home (including weekends). Hopefully, it will give you a flavor of why this travel is worth it to me and Benetech!<br />
<br />
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
New York </h2>
Every year, social entrepreneurs and donors (along with a whole lot of other folks) converge on New York City. It’s the week of the United Nations General Assembly and the Clinton Global Initiative. Even if all you do is spent two minutes in the lobby of the hotel where CGI is held, you have plenty of meetings and events to attend. My trip report mentions 19 different events or meetings, where I talked to at least 40 named individuals, in five days in New York City, and here are some of the highlights:<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-942JgdyNRpM/VlTQt_7tpJI/AAAAAAAAB3g/EgnuuMafRRU/s1600/NYC-Lunar-1079-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Skyscraper at night, with partial moon rising right next to it visually." border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-942JgdyNRpM/VlTQt_7tpJI/AAAAAAAAB3g/EgnuuMafRRU/s400/NYC-Lunar-1079-1.jpg" title="" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Empire State Building and Moon in Eclipse</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Attended events thrown by current funders (Skoll Foundation, the Internet Freedom Program at the State Department), past funders (Omidyar Network), and other funders who I hope will fund us someday (who shall remain nameless for now). </li>
<li>Took pictures of the lunar eclipse next to the Empire State Building(!)</li>
<li>Attended a networking events for social entrepreneurs, such as the one organized by the Schwab Foundation (the organizers of the World Economic Forum in Davos), where we brainstormed about different issues. I led a conversation on what big data is going to mean for social entrepreneurs. </li>
<li>Met with current and prospective individual donors as part of my donor cultivation and stewardship efforts, by thanking current donors and explaining what we’ve accomplished with their support, and sharing our activities with prospective donors in the hopes of getting them to support Benetech. </li>
<li>Consulted with some peer social entrepreneurs about whether we could help them with specific technology for their nonprofits. </li>
<li>Met with a big NYC disability services provider about a possible Bookshare partnership. </li>
<li>Met with a major international human rights defender group about our Martus technology and digital security more generally. </li>
<li>Interviewed several candidates for executive positions at Benetech. </li>
<li>Met with the UN Foundation about a major grant they are giving us to bring Bookshare to India. </li>
<li>And much more… </li>
</ul>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
Washington, D.C. </h2>
I then zipped down to DC for three days. I spent one day with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as they hosted an event for the Technology Partner Network (I’m one of a couple of hundred of tech advisors in the network). It was interesting to hear the latest about the Gates Foundation and their tech directions. We’re a former grantee and we hope that our work and Gates funding priorities coincide again in the future. Mainly, it was interesting to hear the perspective of a bunch of fellow tech advisors and be part of a process of collectively getting smarter.<br />
Next was two days of Capitol Hill lobbying. I spend between four and ten days a year talking to Congressional staff (this year will be at the lower end of the range). I started <a href="http://benetech.blogspot.kr/2008/06/mr-jim-goes-to-washington-again.html" target="_blank">doing this back in 2007</a>, when we won our first big federal contract for Bookshare, to take it from 3,000 students back then to more than 350,000 students now. This time I had three agenda items for my conversations with congressional staff:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DA6h25RsWD0/VlTQK3e6GcI/AAAAAAAAB3Y/x1ztI1iQGqg/s1600/Kenya-2015-1191-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>
<li>Advocating for funding for special education. We’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years advocating against cuts to the funding that supports our work, by pointing out how amazingly effective this funding is. Even in the tough fiscal environment in Washington, we get good hearings from both Republicans and Democrats. Ensuring kids with disabilities get equal opportunity is, fortunately, a bipartisan issue. </li>
<li>The <a href="http://benetech.blogspot.com/2015/05/optimistic-about-marrakesh-treaty.html" target="_blank">Marrakesh Treaty</a>. Word is that the Marrakesh Treaty for the Blind has a ratification package completed. That’s all of the legal work-up on a treaty and how U.S. law needs to change to comply with the treaty (the hope is that these changes are minimal). It’s now up to the Obama Administration to decide if and when they ask the Senate to ratify it. This is not as improbable as it might seem: there’s a pretty good chance the Republican-led Senate might approve the Treaty. I had hoped that the package would have already been in the hands of the Senate, but it hasn’t happened yet. I had a joint meeting (both Republicans and Democrats) with the key Senate Judiciary Committee staff who are the copyright experts, and learned a lot about the process. </li>
<li>Student privacy. We recently wrote <a href="https://medium.com/@Benetech/beware-the-school-privacy-juggernaut-57ab0cfd9a4f#.airjma8dc" target="_blank">a piece in Medium</a> on our concerns about new privacy legislation affecting nonprofits that work in schools. I had a chance to meet with staffers involved in the drafting of two key federal bills that are most likely to be adopted, and shared my issues. This is what my team calls a karma gig. Benetech is going to be able to comply with any reasonable legislation around student privacy, and we’re supportive of improved privacy standards. But, we’re concerned about small nonprofits who are not Google, Facebook, Pearson or Benetech, and they aren’t able to show up in a place like DC. So, we fill in for them. </li>
</ul>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
Nairobi, Kenya </h2>
Next I headed to Nairobi, Kenya. My main commitment was to attend a conference in Uganda (described below in this blog post), but I figured if I was in east Africa, I should take the opportunity to first visit two key partners in Kenya (after having a coffee on Sunday with my cousin's daughter, an MIT grad working on analyzing traffic safety data gleaned from social media in Kenya).<br />
My first visit was with Carol Wanjiku, the CEO of our outsourcing partner Daproim. Carol’s social enterprise in Nairobi employs over 100 students working to proofread books for our Bookshare digital library. Her story is so compelling, I’ve already written a blog post about this incredible woman, entitled <a href="http://benetech.blogspot.kr/2015/10/rockstar-nairobi-social-entrepreneur.html" target="_blank">Rockstar Nairobi Social Entrepreneur.</a> Enough said!<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DA6h25RsWD0/VlTQK3e6GcI/AAAAAAAAB3Y/x1ztI1iQGqg/s1600/Kenya-2015-1191-2.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Alberta Wambua, John Kipchumbah, Jim Fruchterman and Dr. Sam Thenya in front of hospital signs" border="0" height="265" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DA6h25RsWD0/VlTQK3e6GcI/AAAAAAAAB3Y/x1ztI1iQGqg/s400/Kenya-2015-1191-2.jpg" title="" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gender Violence Recover Unit</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The next day I spent with our long-term tech partner, John “Kipp” Kipchumbah of Infonet. Our <a href="http://benetech.blogspot.kr/2011/07/kipp-and-philip-of-social-development.html" target="_blank">first in-person meeting</a> was four years ago, but Kipp has been working with Benetech for more than a decade. Kipp has been a leading software developer in the region, creating software around election monitoring and government transparency just to name a few. <br />
We were supposed to start our visit with a very high government official, but instead Kipp took me over to Nairobi Women’s Hospital. This hospital has a specialty unit that focuses on the survivors of sexual violence such as rape, and Kipp introduced me to Alberta Wambua, who runs the Gender Violence Recovery Centre at the hospital. I quickly found myself talking to one of the front-line doctors, Dr. Edwin, who explained the process of completing the standard rape reporting form paperwork while treating a rape victim. In quick succession I met the medical director who oversees the doctors in the hospital, and then the hospital CEO, Dr. Sam Thenya.<br />
Kipp’s idea was that we could take this paper-based rape reporting system and build it on top of our Martus secure human rights software platform. It would have the following benefits:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Keeping this highly confidential information safe; </li>
<li>Backing up the information securely into the cloud; </li>
<li>Tracking all changes to the records from the very first time the data is captured; </li>
<li>Allowing the medical experts in the Gender Based Violence (GBV) area to have better aggregate data about the prevalence and characteristics of GBV in Kenya. </li>
</ul>
The Benetech team is very excited about helping with this important application: we’ve already built an initial prototype of the app for Kipp and his partners to evaluate.<br />
<br />
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
Kampala, Uganda </h2>
The Sixth Africa Forum was the main reason for my Africa trip. The Africa Forum is the premier meeting of blindness groups across sub-Saharan Africa, and it’s held roughly every three years. It was the third Africa Forum I’ve attended: I went to Accra, Ghana, in 2011 and South Africa in 2004. This time, I had the benefit of help. Our new international Bookshare manager, Terry Jenna, arrived several days before I did and I found myself in a whirl of meetings with international groups, funders, the key disability minister in the Ugandan government, and many others. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bF17pvOYSZ8/VlTQHvz-8XI/AAAAAAAAB3Q/3cc5FGetofs/s1600/Uganda-2015-1207-2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Beatrice Kaggya (Ugandan disability commissioner), Terry Jenna, Minister Sulaiman Madada, Jim Fruchterman in office" border="0" height="426" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bF17pvOYSZ8/VlTQHvz-8XI/AAAAAAAAB3Q/3cc5FGetofs/s640/Uganda-2015-1207-2.jpg" title="" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Visiting the <span style="font-size: 14pt;">Hon. Sulaiman Madada, Uganda's Minister of State for
Gender, Labour and Social Development</span></td></tr>
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The conference was ably keynoted by Professor Ruth Okediji, who played a key role in negotiating the Marrakesh Treaty on behalf of the African delegations. She is a University of Minnesota law school professor who was born in Africa and is a terrific advocate for the Treaty and its empowerment of the blind community. Bookshare was there with two offers. First, Bookshare has more than 200,000 accessible titles in English available to blind people in Africa. So, we’re happy to share the American (and Canadian and British and Indian) content we already have. Second, we’d be happy to provide the digital infrastructure so that African countries can create their own Bookshare collections once they ratify the Marrakesh Treaty.<br />
One moment made a big impression on me. We were demonstrating Bookshare to a person at one of Uganda’s top universities. They have over 100 visually impaired students enrolled, and want to do more for these students. We were sitting in the shade outside the conference facility, but there was good wifi. I brought up our Read Now capability in Google’s Chrome browser and started reading a textbook aloud directly from the browser. The light bulb went off and our guest exclaimed, “That’s exactly what our students need!” A nice reminder of why we do this work!<br />
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Half Moon Bay, California </h2>
After 2.5 weeks on the road, I got back and slept in my bed for a couple of nights. Then, it was off to Miramar Farms in Half Moon Bay, a community on the Pacific Ocean less than an hour from our offices in Silicon Valley. Benetech has held its annual management team offsite at Miramar Farms several times. We find their restored barn to be a terrific place to step away and brainstorm about Benetech’s plans for the coming years.<br />
The offsite went really well, best we have had. I had a particular brainstorm as a result of some ideas presented by the team, because on the flight back from Africa I had just read Sally Osberg’s new book on social entrepreneurship (coauthored with Prof. Roger Martin). It made a big impression on me, and I am also working on a blog post inspired by her book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Beyond-Better-Social-Entrepreneurship/dp/1633690687" target="_blank">Getting Beyond Better</a>.<br />
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Seoul, South Korea </h2>
After an almost restful whirlwind of meetings in California, it was off to Seoul for the Eighth Assembly of the World Movement for Democracy. This is my first time at this conference, which had been strongly recommended to me by Stanford Professor Larry Diamond and the head of the National Endowment for Democracy, Carl Gershman.<br />
What attracted me to the meeting was Benetech’s expanded focus on social justice and the humanitarian fields in our human rights work. It was a chance to get exposed to a new set of people. It was also important to finally meet some leaders in the field who I had never met in person. For example, Professor Ron Deibert from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School. The Citizen Lab is probably the world’s foremost group analyzing the attacks on human rights groups by repressive governments. Although Benetech has cooperated with the Citizen Lab for years, I know that meeting Ron in person will take that relationship up a notch.<br />
At the meeting I met with groups from all over the world, including people who have visited Benetech’s offices but who hadn’t met me (probably because I was traveling). One of the most exciting meetings was with Scott Carpenter of Google Ideas, where I got the inside scoop on their ambitious plans to end online repressive censorship. Google Ideas was there in force, and even as a longtime security geek I learned some things by attending one of their training sessions.<br />
Of course, being in proximity to North Korea, one of the most dire countries in terms of respect for human rights, meant that this topic came up frequently. I had a couple of meetings on the topic, including an illuminating discussion with the Transitional Justice Working Group.<br />
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Boston </h2>
Flying directly from Seoul to Boston (via Dallas), I jumped into an experts’ meeting on the Marrakesh Treaty. Professor Ruth Okediji, who keynoted the Uganda conference a couple of weeks earlier, is visiting Harvard Law School this year. She convened a group of noteworthy law professors who are experts on international law, including human rights and copyright law. The chief negotiators of the Treaty for India (GR Raghavender), Brazil (Kenneth Nobrega), and of course Nigeria (Ruth) all participated. The objective of this group is to draft a guide to the Marrakesh Treaty for countries around the world to use as they implement the Marrakesh provisions in their national law. Even as someone who has worked in the human rights field for many years, I learned a great deal from these eminent experts, and hopefully shed some light on the details on how libraries like Bookshare serve people with disabilities like vision impairment or dyslexia.<br />
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California </h2>
And now I’m briefly back with my team in Palo Alto, and the season has changed from warm and mild to cool and occasionally even rainy. But, it’s sure a nice place to visit!
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Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08214396954972460844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5979923.post-86959233449485364912015-10-20T14:53:00.000-07:002015-10-20T14:53:27.995-07:00Rockstar Nairobi Social Entrepreneur <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Carol Wanjiku is the CEO of <a href="http://www.daproim.com/" target="_blank">Daproim</a>. She’s an incredible social entrepreneur I just visited with in Nairobi, Kenya. She runs a for-profit social enterprise named Daproim that provides data entry services using disadvantaged students as their primary workforce.<br />
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We go way back with her firm. In 2008, we were the first customer of <a href="http://www.samasource.org/" target="_blank">Samasource</a> as they were getting started. Samasource connected us with Daproim in Nairobi to proofread books for our Bookshare project. Bookshare is our large digital library for students with disabilities such as blindness or dyslexia. We use digital ebooks at Bookshare’s core, which can easily be turned into braille, large print or digital audio (using synthetic speech technology). We had just won a large contract to deliver high-quality accessible textbooks to students with disabilities in the U.S., and we needed more help. Samasource connected us with a winning team, and we’ve been using Daproim ever since.<br />
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I visited Daproim four years ago, and wrote about my experiences in a blog post about its founder, <a href="http://benetech.blogspot.com/2011/07/daproim-and-steve-muthee-its-founder.html" target="_blank">Steve Muthee</a>. While I was there, I also met Carol. She was Steve’s operational head, and they had just become engaged. They made a great team: Steve was an enthusiastic salesman/CEO, passionate about building up Kenya through good IT jobs, and Carol ran the team. They recruited their staff from Nairobi slums as well as students from poor rural backgrounds who had made it to Nairobi universities.
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sdD_Yq85D2g/ViVsPQAodbI/AAAAAAAAB24/ZrCb5xTDFMY/s1600/Kenya-2015-1183.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Portrait photo of Carol Wanjiku, seated and smiling, wearing a red jacket" border="0" height="266" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sdD_Yq85D2g/ViVsPQAodbI/AAAAAAAAB24/ZrCb5xTDFMY/s400/Kenya-2015-1183.jpg" title="" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Carol Wanjiku</td></tr>
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Daproim went on to great success. Carol shared that they had received an Impact Sourcing grant from the Rockefeller Foundation and scaled up their capacity. They focused even more on students, and built online resources that allowed them to recruit from across Kenya, including economic and social screening for the neediest students. Daproim worked with TechnoServe and developed soft skills training modules for students who stuck with the work after an initial period. Carol explained that these smart students lacked the connections and people skills to get jobs after graduation, and that Daproim wanted to give them a leg up in going on to tech careers once they graduated from school and from working for Daproim.<br />
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Unfortunately, early last year, Steve got sick. The doctors in Kenya struggled with a diagnosis. Meanwhile, Carol became pregnant with their first child. Steve went to India for more tests. They diagnosed him with a rare, serious disease called dermatomyositis. Only a month after the birth of their daughter, Amara, last October, Steve passed away.<br />
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My team and I were quite worried about Carol, as a new mom suddenly in charge of a social enterprise. We sent our condolences and best wishes for Carol and her new baby. Incredibly, the high-quality work continued to flow from Daproim uninterrupted.<br />
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Last week I was able to visit Nairobi, and I sat down with Carol to find out how we could help her. Her answer was simple: she simply needs more business. As she put it, “Steve’s dream was to see Daproim grow!” They have 250 part-time staff right now, and they want to grow to 800 staff by the end of 2016. I was surprised to find out that we’re her largest customer right now, with more than 100 students working on proofreading educational books for Bookshare. I also learned that our collection development team keeps track of exam schedules in Kenya, and arranges our book flows to Daproim accordingly, so that students can focus on their school work during that period.<br />
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Her limitation is not lack of human capital. Daproim has more than 7600 applications from Kenyan students who want to work there. With the investment in systems thanks to Rockefeller’s support, expansion is relatively easy.<br />
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Carol also asked me if we would serve as a reference for Daproim. No problem! Carol, consider this blog post a down payment on that reference.<br />
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I asked Bookshare’s head of Collection Development, our very own Carol James, about Daproim’s work, and she had this to say:<br />
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She has done an amazing job of keeping Daproim going after Steve’s death – they continue to be one of our best vendor partners, in terms of value, quality, and timeliness, and Carol is so positive and proactive about keeping the relationship with us healthy. </blockquote>
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So, if you’re searching for great data entry services for outsourcing, make your money work twice as hard like we do. We get great services from Daproim, and we know that our money is also supporting the development of the new Africa through its smart yet disadvantaged students!
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Jim Fruchtermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08214396954972460844noreply@blogger.com8