Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

I had the honor to be the opening keynoter for the first-ever  Good Tech Fest , 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. Using Software and Data to Change the World 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. 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!  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. But wait, there’s a silver lining her...

Big complex social problems. Your skills and experiences. Benetech. 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. We are looking for more than a dozen motivated individuals 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. 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 wildcards : i...

Almost anyone from the human rights field will tell you that the work can be as rewarding as it is challenging. When you look at the barriers faced by those defending and advocating for human rights—from the danger of hostile governments and perpetrators, to victims who are naturally suspicious of any support, to the lack of funding necessary to carry on your work—you can see how overwhelming it can be. And yet there are also amazing and fulfilling benefits—bringing the truth to light, making human rights defenders more powerful and helping victims find peace through acknowledgment, reconciliation and even, sometimes, justice. At Benetech, we’re looking for only the best of the best to take on the leadership of our Human Rights Program. There’s a lot on the line—for the person we hire, for our organization and for the people we serve—so we want someone who will be both riveted by and successful in this critical position. That’s why I’ve come up with this “anti job description.” I...

Benetech is committed to developing technology for underserved communities that can reap big benefits from improved access to information. So we’re especially proud to announce the launch of Miradi version 3, the enhanced version of our user-friendly environmental conservation software. Miradi gives conservation planners cutting edge tools to design, manage, monitor and learn from their projects. The new Miradi 3 release offers a powerful work planning interface that lets users forecast expenses, develop budgets, and export project data to donor reports. The software also helps conservation teams prioritize environmental threats, develop objectives and actions, and select monitoring indicators to assess the effectiveness of their strategies. Miradi is the first software program designed especially by and for conservation planners based on a common set of environmental metrics. Miradi is a joint venture between Benetech and the Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP), a consortium of gl...

We're piloting our new Miradi.org website, which is our environmental project management software. Miradi (the new name of what we used to call the e-Adaptive Management software) has been in beta test for a while and we've gotten great feedback from all over the world from environmental practitioners. We've just put Google Analytics on the site, and are playing with it. So, feel free to visit and check it out. Google Grants (Google.org) also did a lot of work on our Google Adwords, and searching for "Miradi" on Google brings up our ad, too. We had a summer MBA intern from Haas Business School (at UC Berkeley), Jeff Rauenhorst, and he wrote a draft launch plan which we're just putting the finishing touches on. Next step is to review it with our partners in developing Miradi: groups like The Nature Conservancy, WCS and WWF. So, we're rolling forward towards getting version 1 out there!

Our new environmental project management software, Miradi , just went into its beta testing. Our core beta testers are drawn from the Conservation Measures Partnership , coalition of the leading biodiversity groups (such as The Nature Conservancy, WWF and WCS). I thought that meant a small beta test, but it turns out that we already have testers registered from 16 different countries on 6 different continents! Since we're designing this software for field people, and these groups have projects all over the world, it's just to be expected. Miradi is an exciting project: I'm looking forward to making steady upgrades to the software this year. We're using an agile development mechanism, which means that we are responding quickly to user feedback and releasing new versions of the software several times a month. Later this year we should have a publicly available version 1 of the product!