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Press Release: SocialCoding4Good has announced an exciting new partnership with the VMware User Group (VMUG), marking its first engagement with a corporate partner’s extended user community. This joint initiative, in support of the VMUG social impact program, will enable VMUG members to offer their skills to SocialCoding4Good Project Partners—nonprofit organizations creating and maintaining open source software addressing some of the world’s most critical challenges.

Our neighbors at Palo Alto Online have featured our CEO, Jim Fruchterman, in their “First Person” video series. The series includes one-on-one interviews with locals who are making a difference in the community. In the conversation, Jim describes the journey that led him from studying engineering at Cal Tech to the founding of Benetech. He also talks about how while most companies focus on developing technology that will generate big profits, Benetech, as a nonprofit, focuses on developing technology for social good.

SocialCoding4Good began with the idea of building a sort of Match.com for tech volunteerism — an algorithmic platform that would match individual software developers to nonprofit organizations that were building open source software for socially good causes. Everything would be automated, everyone would get what they needed and our idea would help change the world! At the time of inception, venturing into the world of corporate social responsibility was not even on our roadmap. The problem: our idea wouldn’t address the real challenge…

Last month, leaders from around the world gathered in Marrakesh, Morocco, with the hope of taking a huge step forward and designing that international model. I’m excited to report: they did just that. The “Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled,” which will make it possible for people who are blind, or have other print disabilities such as dyslexia to get access to the books they need no matter where they live, was adopted by the diplomatic conference and signed on the spot by over 50 countries. We have a treaty…and it’s great!

This piece originally appeared as a guest post on Jim Fruchterman’s Blog. I recently had the honor to speak at the first-ever Braille Summit, hosted on June 19-21, 2013 by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) and Perkins School for the Blind. With the goal of promoting braille literacy, this […]