How can we help?
Case study
The team behind the Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client has started heavily promoting their Mozilla Service Week, which is coming this fall. Among the projects they suggest that their fan base–largely technologists–take on in local communities are:
- They teach senior citizens how to use the Web.
- They show a non-profit how to use social networking to grow its base of supporters.
- They help install a wireless network at a school.
- They create Web how-to materials for a library’s computer cluster.
- They refurbish hardware for a local computer center.
- They update a non-profit organization’s website.
It’s a great project and I encourage anyone reading this to get involved.
(I’ll point out that, Mozilla does plenty to make the world a better place by creating an open browser and making it successful and widely-adopted. This initiative won’t come close to that level of impact, but it is noble.)
The big picture
This is a great segue to one of the defining questions of our age: who will teach the millions of Americans and billions of people around the world how to put the best technologies of our time to use in their own lives? There are lots of follow-up questions here, including: who is responsible for doing so? should all technologies be designed in a way that they are “intuitive enough” for anyone to use them? should the end user play a role in maintaining the technology or is it OK to have a driver/mechanic (user/expert) relationship with core technologies like a person’s computer? This list goes on and on…
How can we help?
The question for a startup like Jute Networks is: how can we help ensure that all people have access to technologies that make their lives better?
We help most by making our company successful. Jute NRM is a truly innovative user interface for complex relationships data. The better the interface, the more valuable that information is to a broader audience. In a world with more data than our greatest minds know what to do with, data visualization’s great promise is to increase all people’s ability to at least understand data that impacts their lives and potentially make better decisions that increase their quality of life.
From an action-oriented perspective, we’ve got to start finding clients that really need our help to fulfill their missions. Large non-profits, innovative startups…any operation that lives and dies by its relationships. In a perfect world, our clients will be dedicated being the change we want to see in the world (to paraphrase Gandhi). We believe in a progressive approach to business, government and stewardship of the earth. We believe that entrepreneurship and technological innovation offer great promise to create a more perfect union, domestically and the world round.
If you need to get more value out of complex relationship data and your organization seems like a fit, contact me, Sean McDonald, today.