Social Entrepreneurs Doing Deals

10/2006 - I am having a blast at the Skoll Forum: spending tons of time talking to people about social change and technology. The best part has been talking to the other Skoll entrepreneurs. By putting us all in the same hotel, and giving us plenty of time to talk, we're coming up with tons of ways that we can work together to advance our common missions. Just some quick examples:

- Heidi Kuhn of Roots of Peace: Heidi has actually driven a great deal of real landmine removal, and she is very strong on the human and public side of the issue (somewhere where we are not strong). I know that as soon as we have a working prototype of our landmine detector (which is some time off in the future), we'll get help getting it tested in some of the most mine affected countries

- Bunker Roy of the Barefoot College: Bunker is pushing me to do something for blind people in India, and I am getting excited about the challenge

- talking to John Wood of Room to Read about his computer labs and their (successful) efforts to publish children's books in Nepali and Khmer. They are definitely tackling market failure in the publishing industry: in Nepal they are now the second largest publisher of children's books in Nepali.

- Rodrigo Baggio (of CDI in Brazil) and I are trying to find more time together since we're both in the IT space: we know there's a joint project here somewhere.

and more. There is such a natural desire to find ways to work together, and each of us has major strengths to bring to any such partnership. I don't expect each of these conversations to result in something in the coming year, but I'm sure we will find at least one "live one" in the next year, and more after that.