Blog

I recently returned from a weeklong training in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where I worked with our partner, Housing Works, to set up a nation-wide human rights documentation project using Martus, Benetech’s secure, open source documentation tool. The new initiative follows on the heels of a spate of homophobic violence experienced by the Haitian LGBTI community earlier this year. By the end of our training week, we graduated 20 new Martus Human Rights monitors representing 10 organizations working across the country with the goal of ensuring that no human rights violation motivated by homophobia, misogyny or stigma based on HIV status goes undocumented.

At their best, IP laws encourage technological advances, reward creativity, and benefit society. Practical and creative innovators need space to operate and ensure those benefits reach the people who desperately need new solutions but are often least able to afford them. To make this possible, we must ensure balance in copyright laws and defend fair use as a laboratory for creativity. With the leverage of technology and the foundation provided by well thought out IP laws, we can inspire both economic growth and social good.

There were many over-the-top cultural experiences I took in on my recent visit to the U.A.E., where I headed this past November to represent Bookshare at the 32nd Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF). As Director of Content Acquisition for Benetech’s Global Literacy Program, which operates Bookshare, my key role is to engage with publishers in a deep conversation about the power of digital books to improve the lives of people at a reading disadvantage both here in the U.S. and around the world.

Inside Silicon Valley, a weekly public affairs program on radio station 1590 KLIV in San Jose, CA, featured our CEO, Jim Fruchterman, in a conversation about his journey as a social entrepreneur and Benetech.

Are you focused on planning for success? Good. But are you also planning for failure? You should, because it’s how we fail that sets us up for success, argues David Pablo Cohn. We recently had the pleasure of hosting Pablo at Benetech’s offices, where he shared with us some rules of thumb he’d picked up along the way for failing as well as possible. This was an opportune lesson for the Benetech team, as we recently launched Benetech Labs. In the spirit of new beginnings and New Year’s resolutions, we’d like to share here Pablo’s four rules for (good) failure as a way of life.