Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

The ten days in the UK amazed me with the power of social media in my life. As a tech guy who also plays a social entrepreneur, I often get asked by my SE buddies about what are the practical use of a tool like Twitter. I moderated an excellent session at the Skoll World Forum last week on using social media for more social mission impact. But rather than making this an extensive essay on the glories of social media, I just want to give some examples from my UK trip, just from Twitter. I spend less than 15 minutes a day on social media, but the payoffs are huge! BBC tracks me down! When I arrived in London on Sunday, I sent a tweet out on Twitter: Just landed at Heathrow and looking forward to Oxford and seeing all my #socent buddies at #swf10 I quickly get a direct message from Tim Weber, the Business Editor of the BBC News website. He invites me to come by the BBC in London the next day for a tour of the newsroom. Via Twitter, we set the time and he gives me the Tube stop (...

Today is Louis Braille's 200th birthday, and there's been a great deal of coverage for the inventor of the premier reading system for the blind. The former British Home Secretary, David Blunkett, published a piece for the BBC called Why Braille is brilliant today. The National Federation of the Blind is organizing events around the country to celebrate his birthday and the invention of Braille . It helps blind people all over the world, as this recent sample of Hindi Braille demonstrates. We're very proud at Bookshare.org about our support of Braille. We believe that digital Braille displays combined with Bookshare really make Braille much more practical. What power when you can carry around an entire library of Braille books that weights only two pounds!