The past week

It's been a couple of days since my last post. During this time we've had two setbacks actually:

• The meeting with Dr. Yunus did not go at all as we wanted it.
• I did not get to be a part of the Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellows program.

Both of these thing are kind of downers which at least I had high hopes for. But there's nothing to do but to brush the dust of our shoulders and keep on going. Who knows? This might be "the chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure" ;)

And speaking of "begin again"... I was contacted by a college of mine mailed who said that he might have an opportunity to preset a project for Morten Lund and asked if the project we work on could fit. Since Morten Lund has his 'WILD' investment portfolio (Worldwide Investments and Involvement in Life Development) I think it just might be a perfect match :) I'm hoping for the best!

Also, thanks to another college of mine (Joakim Back) I've started to plan a happy-hacking prototyping session of our project. I hope to get a couple of great developers together in a room and try make functioning prototype of what it is we want to do. If we have that we are able to show anyone we meet what It is, and not just describe It... and that I think would be of great value!

I am a developer

This week has been a bit of an in-between week. I'm waiting for mails to be returned, the vacations to end for some of the people I have been in contact with and so on.

The main goal is to raise the funds needed to make this project real. Many of you might know that we have secured funds from Way Group which means that their excellent consultants will develop the system for no profit (which actually means "at loss" since all of their consultants are in profitable assignments most of the time). This means that Way Group will pitch in about half the cost of the system. The other half is what we're chasing at the moment...

Anyhow... Since I'm waiting for stuff and not really feeling that things are going forward with the fundraising this week I have opened up Eclipse (a Java development tool) for the first time in ages. Since my weapon of choice really is Java, I thought that I might as well define the domain model and the interface for the system's services in code... and I must say that it feels really good to create some pseudo-code which has only existed in my head or in documentation before. It's manageable and validating, somehow... I guess you can't take the code out of a developer :)

Problems with a word...

I have recently realized that the word “charity” has a very negative ring to it in many peoples ears. When I hear the word I think of “a foundation created to promote the public good”. Apparently many think “the providing of goods or money to those in need” and by that relate it directly to the first part of the old saying "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for life.". Even though my interpretation of the word includes teaching the man how to fish, I can’t change peoples view of it. That’s why I have decided to stop using “the word” all together. But that presents a problem... What should I use instead that?

As I state in my profile, the innovation I have come up with will be able to drive more money to any “foundation created to promote the public good”. We have decided that we should focus mainly on those working with the UN Millennium Development Goals, and in my mind these goals are all about sustainability (or “teach a man to fish”).

I, personally, have no knowledge of how to save the world. If I tried I would most certainly screw things up even worse then they already are. What we can do with this innovation is generate more money to organizations that know how to save the world. These organizations are the once working to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals, but we can help them do so by providing means.

Back to the question. What should we call the organizations that we want to generate money to, and the action of giving money to them? Should we focus on the word “causes” and say e.g. “giving to a cause”? “Cause” is a good word but in my mind it is zooms out on a macro level; many “foundations created to promote the public good” can focus on the same cause. Any help on this would be very appreciated...

Full feed...

On request I have changed the RSS feed to include the full post. I didn't do this to begin with since I wanted people to go to the blog and post comments and interact. When I stop and think about it for a second this was obviously an attempt to steer you readers rather then accommodate you. I apologize for my blatant disrespect for you all and right my wrong ;)

Example of a social business

In this short video Dr. Yunus describes how Grameen Danone came to be and why it is a social business.