Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

Last night I was able to meet Vivek Kundra, the new Chief Information Officer of the federal government, at an event organized by Full Circle Fund and the Craigslist Foundation hosted by IBM at their offices on Market Street in San Francisco. For me, it's an amazing change. In the last month, I've been able to meet Obama's CIO, the new CTO, Aneesh Chopra, and the head of the White House Office of Social Innovation, Sonal Shah, all in small group settings where every attendee got to speak. These three are hopefully representative of the technology and innovation agenda of the new administration. They are all coming out to the San Francisco Bay Area, a hotbed of tech and innovation, primarily to listen. But, it's also clear that they have a really clear grasp of many of the issues facing innovation in the federal government, tempered with a healthy dose of reality. In the tech area, Vivek Kundra noted that the annual IT budget of the federal government is $76 billion....

Just had a good conversation this morning with Craig Newmark of Craigslist and the Craigslist Foundation . There are two hot issue right now on Craig's social action radar, the new launch of the All For Good website and next weekend's Craigslist Foundation Boot Camp in Berkeley. On Craig and Craigslist Q: Do you consider yourself a social entrepreneur? A: No, I don't think of myself that way. I may be one, but it seems to have too many syllables. I think of myself as a nerd. Q: Tell me about the balance between the two bottom lines of Craigslist as a social enterprise. A: We are wholly driven by our community. We ask them what they want and need, and then we do it the best we can. Then we go back and ask again. Jim [Buckmaster] runs the business. I was influenced back in 1976, when I was considering a job with IBM, by reading a quote from TJ Watson (Sr or Jr) about how if you took care of the customer, the business takes care of itself. Q: Do you have explicit ch...