Close
Menu

About
Perspectives
Community

Skoll World Forum
Archive
Login

Friday, April 16, 2010

Next Generation Social Media For Greater Programmatic Impact

Back to schedule←
Session

Session Description

Tech literate social entrepreneurs are using mobile technology and the latest in social media tools to loop staff, beneficiaries and supporters together in new and innovative ways. Going beyond the often siloed departments of communications and fundraising, this session will focus on cutting edge strategies and uses of social media for greater impact on mission objectives. Move beyond Facebook and Twitter and redesign your social media strategy to dissolve distances, expand roles of beneficiaries, donors and staff, and to increase your programmatic impact.

 

When | Where

09:00 - 10:30 Friday, April 16

Session leaders

  • Jim Fruchterman Speaker
    Founder and CEO, Benetech
    Jim Fruchterman is the founder and CEO of Benetech, a Silicon Valley nonprofit technology company that develops software applications to address unmet needs of users in the social sector. He is the recipient of numerous awards recognizing his work as a pioneering social entrepreneur, including the MacArthur Fellowship, Caltech’s Distinguished Alumni Award, the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, and the Migel Medal—the highest honor in the blindness field—from the American Fdn for the Blind. A Caltech-trained engineer, Jim’s first social enterprise idea was a machine that recognizes words and uses software to read those words aloud to people who are blind. In 1989—after a stint as a rocket scientist and after creating two successful for-profit Silicon Valley companies—he founded Benetech to actually build reading machines. Not only did these tools give blind users the freedom to read independently, they proved critical to their social inclusion and enabled them to expand their educational and employment opportunities. This impact inspired Jim to broaden Benetech’s mission to empower people to improve their lives by leveraging scalable technological applications. Since then, Benetech’s work has grown to touch thousands of organizations and the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Benetech’s suite of tools and services has transformed the ways in which people with disabilities such as dyslexia and vision impairment access printed information, at-risk human rights defenders safely document abuse, and environmental practitioners protect species and ecosystems. Today, through Benetech Labs, its innovation arm, Benetech explores new software-for-good ideas that have the potential to make life better for millions. Through his work with Benetech and as a trailblazer in the field of social entrepreneurship, Jim continues to advance his vision of a world in which the benefits of technology reach all of humanity, not just the wealthiest and most able five
    Read Full Bio
  • Leila Chirayath Janah Speaker
    CEO, Samasource
    Leila Chirayath Janah is Founder and CEO of Samasource, a social business that connects over 600 women, youth, and refugees living in poverty to digital work. Samasource, a grantee of the Rockefeller and Mulago Foundations, is a recipient of the Netexplorateur Innovation Prize and has been profiled by CBS, CNN, and The New York Times. Ms. Janah serves on the boards of the San Francisco Social Enterprise Institute and Tech Soup Global. She received a BA from Harvard.
    Read Full Bio
  • Marc Davis Speaker
    Chief Scientist & Co-Founder, Invention Arts
    Marc Davis is Chief Scientist of Invention Arts, which invents mobile and social technologies connecting people, the Web, and the world. Before Invention Arts, he was Chief Scientist and VP Early Stage Products for Yahoo! Mobile. As Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley School of Information, he directed Garage Cinema Research, which pioneered context-aware mobile media uploading, tagging, and sharing, and context-aware face recognition. Marc has transformed his ideas into over 150 patent applications, and numerous prototypes, products, and publications.
    Read Full Bio
  • Monty Metzger Speaker
    Founder and CEO, Ahead of Time GmbH
    Monty C. M. Metzger is an entrepreneur, author and trend-scout. He is CEO of Ahead of Time, an innovation agency focusing on social media marketing, and he is founder of the open think tank about the future of mobile media, Mocom 2020. Monty founded his first company in 1998 and managed a global trend research consultancy. He studied Business Administration and Marketing in Germany and Switzerland, and he has just published the book Mobile Future 2020.
    Read Full Bio