Brugge Blog

It was a year ago last November that I got the chance to step in to a different kind of working world, and I’ve got to say it’s been a life changer. Benetech, where I’m working on the new generation of Bookshare.org, is out to change the world, but in places that very few other high-tech startups consider as “markets.” The focus of Benetech ventures is places you would see the traditional non-profits: environmental stewardship, human rights, literacy. The difference here is that Benetech is finding ways to blend in technology as a leverage bar to give the same power and advantage to social causes that’s given to your usual business problems. It’s really just a broadening of the imagination of what problems can be worked on with technology, as Tim O’Reilly would say.

The founder and head of Benetech, Jim Fruchterman, is a tireless and eloquent champion of this world view. His Beneblog is what first pulled me in when I started reading it about two years ago. He chronicles a vibrant and energetic world of social entrepreneurs who are drawing the vast array of technical tools we have into forms that make amazing differences in the lives of people, not just through Benetech but through new organizations around the world.

Some examples of the waters that Benetech is swimming in:

• Giving convservation organizations tools to better work with the land they help protect.
• Helping Guatemala sift through a mountain of National Police records to better face their most recent history.
• Working with the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission to catalog and analyze the human rights history during their recent war.
• Taking on the challenge of how to make technology available to people who need it, in whatever social, physical or economic condition they find themselves in. Lofty? Yes. Important? Certainly. Possible? Don’t count them out.

That’s just a slice of a world where others are just as imaginative and ambitious:

• Literacy and visual impairment work on the scale of India
• Bringing books to rural areas in China by backpacking “voluntourists.”
• Using cell phones to provide basic banking services to the underserved in Africa.
• Sharing ideas, lessons and inspiration to other social entrepreneurs at gatherings like the World Economic Forum and through groups like the Social Enterprise Alliance, to keep the energy going. And then celebrating champions with the San Jose Tech Museum Tech Awards.

The wonderful part is that viewed from the inside of the movement, within the day-to-day work of building the new Bookshare.org, it is just as exciting. Working with top-notch engineers, quality tools, and an entire team focused on something that everyone feels is worth being passionate about, you can’t call those kinds of days drudge work.