Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

I’m on the plane heading back to the U.S. after my first visit to the country of Qatar. It was a lightning visit of only two days (Sunday and Monday), with a focus on attending the World Economic Forum's Global Redesign Summit 2010 (the GRI). The government of Qatar hosted the conference, and underwrote travel and accommodation. This meeting was a follow-up for me from my attendance earlier this year at the main WEF meeting in Davos , where I presented my proposal as part of the GRI. My proposal was on ensuring that all of humanity benefits from the incredible knowledge and technology. We need to encourage limitations and exceptions (like the one in the U.S. that makes Bookshare possible) and open licensing terms, so that people who the market will fail to address get the benefits of our incredibly rich and expanding knowledge base. One famous example of this approach is the affordable licensing and thus wider availability of drugs to combat HIV/AIDS in the developing world,...

As I head off to the WEF Summit in Davos, I'm also excited about the Social Enterprise Alliance Summit coming up in San Francisco at the end of April. The membership of the Alliance are "my people," folks who speak both social and business fluently. The response to the early bird registration was incredible. We had to extend the early bird a week (actually, from last Friday to today) for member organizations to make sure everybody who wanted to register early got their double-discount (being a member and being an early bird). Benetech is sending four of our team, including me. We're really looking forward to it. This year's Summit is special because we're cohosting the Social Enterprise World Forum, which was held in Scotland and Australia the last two years (I got to go to the first one in Scotland: it was incredible to see how vibrant and successful the movement is in the UK). So, we're expecting a great turnout from our international peers in th...

One of the highlights of last week's Social Enterprise Alliance's Summit was the Launch of the Policy Track . We were delighted to have with us Carlos Monje of the White House Office of Social Innovation (so new, it doesn't have a website). A lot of cool things happened in the policy track (even I spoke), but I think the interesting thing was Carlos' comments. And so, I'll share those with you. According to Carlos, the Office is part of the domestic policy team inside the White House. They have four staff right now. They have three areas of focus: Service. The big deal here is the Edward Kennedy Serve America Act. Michelle Obama was a big part of Public Allies and is a huge fan of national service Public Private partnerships. Social innovation. The service angle is not service for its own sake. They see this as a big deal, and expect to upgrade Volunteer.gov to really rally more volunteer service. There will be a Social Innovation Fund, small by federal stan...

I recently took on the role of chairing the Social Enterprise Alliance, the main grassroots group representing social enterprises in the U.S. and Canada. One of our new strategies to respond to the increasing demand for social enterprise knowledge is to encourage chapters to form. The initial chapters have just been starting this year. Our first chapter was in St. Louis, and our second one in Baltimore, and more are forming all the time. I know that a group is starting here in the San Francisco bay area, and I’m looking forward to joining it. You can contact SEA’s chapters and organizing groups on the SEA Chapter page . Kris Prendergast just told me that the second meeting of the Chicago chapter formation group was attended by more than 100 people! I’m delighted to hear there’s so much energy around social enterprise in my hometown (I grew up in the Chicago suburbs).