Tech4Society

It's been three months since Tech4Society, and many of the ideas and conversations I encountered there are just beginning to sink in. In the weeks before the conference, Ashoka's Danielle Dumm wrote a series of posts on this blog called The Road to Hyderabad. There's something wonderfully chaotic about these posts, as they veer between the worldchanging ideas that Tech4Society would highlight and the practical complications and difficulties that go into planning a conference with participants from around the world. It seemed appropriate to bookend the conference with some thoughts of my own on the road from Hyderabad.

What Are We Building?

Ashoka and The Lemelson Foundation convene the world's leading social entrepreneurs in invention, technological innovation, and science education in Hyderabad, India in February 2010. Produced by Cory Wilson / http://corywilson.net

English Language

Ashoka hosts a monthly, Twitter-based chat called SocEntChat, in which anyone can participate and discuss issues surrounding social enterprise. It's a great place to share ideas. This month's chat was all about technological innovations, hosted by Ashoka's Tom Dawkins. Along with the usual crowd, Tech4Society organizer (and Twitter newcomer) Rosa Wang was there to share reflections from the conference. You can read the full transcript here.

SocialEdge kicked off a new discussion yesterday, led by Ashoka's own Rosa Wang.  Continuing on the heels of Tech4Society earlier this month, here's where the discussion starts:

"Technology & Social Innovations

Developing technologies that solve the right problems can be enormously challenging, and then bringing them to the people who need them even more so. Social entrepreneurs from around the world met in Hyderabad earlier this month to share what they have learned about the challenges and successes of technological innovation to serve the poor. Let’s take this further in our discussion here."

Rosa shares a bit about the attendees, connections, learning and conversations what went on at Hyderabad, and opens the same questions to the rest of us:

Tim Prestero / Source: Draper Richards Foundation

Today was probably my favorite panel discussion so far, Reaching for Economies of Scale: Mass Production. "Scale" is a word that's been used many times at Tech4Society, but like many ubiquitous words, part of why it's used so frequently is that it's difficult to define.

The panel was moderated by Tim Prestero of Design That Matters. Joining Tim were Anita Moura, Rakesh Pandey, and Ali Ansari. The panelists tried to examine the various types and shades of scaling. Should we strive to bring a single innovation to as many people as possible with one centralized means of production and distribution? Or should each community be taught to produce and distribute the invention internally? Or for that matter, what if a village adopts your invention without asking? Is that necessarily a bad thing?

Every day throughout the event, we'll recap the day's events and coverage at http://tech.ashoka.org/tech4society

Click here for Day 1, and check back tomorrow as we add more.

Remember, you can follow coverage here on the AshokaTECH blog and get involved with the discussion as it happens on Twitter—just use #tech4soc in your tweets.  Ask questions, share thoughts, ideas and links, read what others have to say and tell us what you think!

There's a live discussion on Twitter going on right now about Tech4Society.  Here's what people are saying, from Hyderabad and around the world.

You can join in too—just log on to Twitter and use #tech4soc in your tweets!

This morning's panel of young inventors from the Youth Venture program was one of the highlights of the conference. Youth Venture is a project started by Ashoka to encourage and reward invention among 16-25-year-olds. In cooperation with MTV and The Lemelson Foundation, Youth Venture produced a half-hour documentary on the inventors that's currently making the rounds on MTV in Latin America. Youth Venture has also produced two e-books with featured and interviews on the inventors and their ideas.

Charles Tsai and Marina Mansilla have spent the past year working with inventors from all around the world between the ages of 16 and 25. Interestingly, the conference was actually the first time Charles and Marina had met in person.

This video profiles Ashoka-Lemelson fellow Hilmi Quraishi's work with mobile innovations in rural India and demonstrates the power of collaboration between the private and citizen sectors. The video premiered during yesterday's panel session on building the business-social bridge.

Mobile Technology Inventions in Rural India: The Case for Building Business-Social Bridges from Cory Wilson on Vimeo.

Below is a longer version of the video.

Richard Jefferson, John Wilbanks, Phil Weilerstein, Dave Robinson

I wrote a blog post last week in anticipation of today's discussion on intellectual property. It's a topic that I've been interested in for some time, and I was looking forward to seeing what sort of themes would arise when experts on the topic got in front of a room of inventor-entrepreneurs.

The discussion didn't disappoint. The panelists were Richard Jefferson of Cambia, John Wilbanks of Science Commons, Phil Weilerstein of the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance, and Dave Robinson (Bright Simons unfortunately couldn't attend).

The discussion was animated and even heated at times. Richard began by saying that the patent system was designed to support sharing and reuse of ideas, not restrict it. The first patent administrator was Thomas Jefferson, and according to Richard, early 1800s patents were administered with a "legal nod and a wink." If you could demonstrate Thomas Jefferson the novelty and use of your idea, then he'd grant you a patent. The purpose, Richard says, was to bring explanations of new technologies into the public domain; the temporary monopoly inventors would be granted on their inventions was a side effect.